DOG DAYS/ HUNDSTAGE


Austria, 2001, 121 minutes, Colour.
Maria Hofstaetter.
Directed by Ulrich Seidl.

If you took a cross section of Austrian citizens and looked at what they do in some detail over a couple of days, the result would be something like Dog Days.

Reality TV has in recent years cultivated a certain prurience in our viewing. We tend to be mesmerised by odd characters, bizarre situations and our curiosity is roused by behaviour which is not like our own. Director Ulrich Seidl is a documentary film-maker. He certainly brings his observant eye to the goings on on these hot dog days in a Vienna suburban estate.

The characters range from

a security alarm salesman who is on the alert for someone who has been scratching the local cars, a woman who visits a sex club,

her masseur and her unobtrusive husband,

an old man who wants his elderly housekeeper to wear his dead wife's clothes,

a schoolteacher who is involved with a drunken and brutal lout and his friend.

These characters are played by amateurs. The most puzzling and irritating character is played by a professional actress. She is Anna who spends every day getting lifts from customers at a supermarket. She insists on playing her favourite tape and talking incessantly, bluntly and rudely. She acts as a kind of chorus to the experiences of the dog days. Much of the film makes wearing watching, much of it is repellent, but all of it offers a glimpse of life behind suburban fences and walls.