Dog Days

Weekend. It is oppressively hot, south of Vienna, in no man's land between highway feeder roads, supermarkets and detached houses. The temperature rises, the aggression increases. Asphalt surfaces crack open. This merciless midsummer period at the end of July and deep into August is known as the "dog days". In this heated atmosphere, six loosely connected but masterfully assembled stories tell of everyday life and aggression for two days and two nights; of nights full of games, sex and violence and of days full of loneliness and longing for love. Ulrich Seidl, who made several award-winning documentaries before his first feature film, also adopts a documentary-like, dissecting approach here, the authenticity of which is reinforced by the use of amateur actors. The result is a theater of cruelty critical of civilization, for which Seidl won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival before his film was named the most successful cinema film of the year in Austria. And this despite the fact that "Dog Days" is a film full of impositions. At the same time, however, it is a revealing experimental set-up about man as man's greatest enemy - a merciless look behind the pretty facades of a seemingly ideal suburban world.