Caniche

Bigas Luna is one of the most interesting spanish filmmakers working today, a director always faithful to his own style and his obsessions (mostly food and sex). His movies are sensual (JAMON, JAMON), strange (LA TETA Y LA LUNA), often fascinating (LA CAMARERA DEL TITANIC), sometimes disappointing (HUEVOS DE ORO). But here I'm talking only about his most modern films (from LOLA or ANGUSTIA, more or less), his first movies were completely different and CANICHE is one of them.

Like BILBAO, CANICHE is disturbing, ugly, dirty, sordid, but also strangely beautiful. Is like poetry extracted from ugliness... It tells the story of 2 brothers, Bernardo (Àngel Jové, the lead from BILBAO) and Eloisa (Consol Tura), who live alone in a huge mansion and as result from an inheritance, begin to hate each other... Their little dog, a white poodle ('caniche' in spanish) becomes the unusual witness of this situation, just like us, and the real lead of the film.

An excellent film very similar to BILBAO and an example of how talented but how different Luna was in the late 70's. And yes, he was better...

This grotesque black comedy--that's about the best term for it--centers on a brother and sister, both 40-ish, who live alone in a rambling but decrepit mansion, completely interdependent while getting on each others' nerves. Mostly they obsess over wheedlng more money out of an elderly aunt who seems rather nasty herself, but is understandably rather sick of being squeezed by these disagreeable layabouts.

At a certain point the situation changes, and the siblings inherit the aunt's money. The mansion gets an extensive immediate makeover, but relations between the two only deteriorate further, particularly because the brother's mental instability and apparent incestuous feelings become more obvious. He's jealous--not just of the older man she's now seeing, but of the poodle she is incessantly fussing over, somewhat like a doting parent and somewhat (diusturbingly) like a lover.

You know all this isn't going to turn out well. The attention paid to dogs in general (there's also some kind of nearby kennel that the brother frequently visits) lends a certain thematic novelty to what's otherwise a "Baby Jane"-like psychological thriller of two difficult personalities whose sickness festers in isolation, feeding off mutual discord. It's an interesting early Bigas Lunas effort.

The film is disturbing and ugly. I don't really find any beauty in it. There is a passion for dogs and the best moments are when the dogs perform all alone. I could eventually see it as philosophical inquiry into what we've done as humans, turning wolves into dogs and then becoming savage animals ourselves in the way we many times treat the animals that trust us. The human characters in the movie are very hard to sympathize with. All of them. So, again, a very dark movie. Not for sensitive people and while there is not gore per se, the violence suggested can be quite disturbing. The direction is not bad. Perhaps the most interesting part of the movie.