A man (Lee Kang-sheng) tries to make it in Taipeh - but the only work
he gets is to hold up a street sign, come rain come shine, something he
can only pull through with lots and lots of alcohol. He doesn't have a
proper home, lives in a derelict building, and washes at public restrooms.
Now that wouldn't be too bad if he wasn't also a single dad - and since he
has to work all day, he sends his kids to supermarkets and the like where
it's warm and they can be assumed safe. At one supermarket, the kids
capture the attention of a female supermarket clerk, a kind of weird woman
who has been alone for too long, and who fills the emptiness of her life
with looking after stray dogs, often feeding them food that has gone off
in the supermarket and the like. Slowly, the woman wins the kids' trust,
and eventually, she pretty much forces them and their father to stay at
their house - which far from solves all their problems ... Stray
Dogs is a slow moving film - as was to be expected from director Tsai
Ming-liang, who specializes in very long and very static, but also very
beautiful shots, shots in which very little happens but which carry lots
of emotion and sometimes also lots of humour. Now I'll be honest, as much
as I'm a fan, in Stray Dogs, he at times loses his usually
impeccably balance between nothing and deep emotion at times, so some
scenes feel dragged out, boring even - but overall, while Stray Dogs is
definitely not his best movie, it still shows a master at work.
|