Depictions of transness can sometimes be so weighed down by political and social urgency that it is difficult for a film to get out from underneath the weight of proper presentation. Director Henry Hanson is exploiting the facts of that understanding to chart a path forward in pursuit of great trans comedy. Hanson and the crew of actors who improvised their dialogue in their newest film Dog Movie, understand that some of the funniest, most provocative comedy is produced through discomfort. On these terms, because god knows our lives are often uncomfortable, one would think that there must be thousands of great comic trans films and performances, but it’s not a robust area of our depiction. There’s films starring Holly Woodlawn and her Warholian co-stars Candy Darling, and Jackie Curtis, there’s the strange mid-aughts farceThe Plug Lady, and more recently, pictures like The People’s Joker and Computer Hearts, to name a few. In Dog Movie, Hason shows us a passive-aggressive tenderqueer couple in Arrow (Marten Katze) and Haven (Jessie Gaston) meeting their own worst nightmare: a hanger-on housemate friend named Bloo (Milo Talwani), who they desperately want to kick out of their home, but are terrified of offending them in the process. Things come to a head when they adopt an elderly dog, who is also named Blue.
They prefer their canine compatriot to their human one, and the crew get a lot of mileage out of the joke that the dog, and their difficult housemate have the same name. This coincidence immediately causes Bloo to think poorly of the dog. They’ve fought for their name right? It’s the most basic area of dignity to call a trans person by their chosen moniker, but Blue is so old that he won’t respond to a new name, and Bloo seems to have more than a little Bjork in their spirit and goes only by one name and refuses to be called anything else. They settle on calling them Dog Blue and Human Bloo. More to the point of the Bjork-isms, Bloo spends most of their days plunking away at a ukulele making avant-garde music. They’ve nested in the corner of their living space, and frequently walk around in the nude. When Arrow and Haven ask Bloo to take the dog for walks while they are working at their jobs, Bloo behaves like it is a great imposition on their quality of life. Their problem coincides with many in-community punchlines, my favorite of them being a grainy shot of Haven reading a paperback copy of “Conflict is Not Abuse” in their bed.
Hanson’s eye for characters is lusciously gentle, and very good at capturing the minutiae of their dynamics and traits. There aren’t many aesthetic leaps, but a controlled, determined sense of mood and pace, which enlivens the comedy. The dynamics between these four characters (the dog gets all of the best close-ups) are reminiscent of workplace comedies, or some of the faux mockumentary realism of Christopher Guest movies like Waiting for Guffman. The fact that Bloo frequently interrupts their work from home job with music, weed, and probing questions about what they’re doing, only increases the claustrophobic effect of this household menace. However, Hanson doesn’t treat Bloo like a monster either with broad strokes of obvious malice or slapstick…they’re just kind of a fuck-up, and we need more trans fuck-ups onscreen. We all know one. We all love one. We all root for one to get their shit together. Bloo isn’t evil, but their behavior and mistakes accumulate into some deeply uncomfortable moments of comedy. When Arrow and Haven go out for a night on the town, and ask Human Bloo to feed Dog Blue his old doggy pills, and take him for a walk so he can have a bowel movement, the audience understands that Bloo will fail, and the inevitable punchline will come exactly as we expect it to. This isn’t a problem, but an understanding of good comic structure. Dog Movie has many well understood moments such as these, and even if it’s hour long run time is stretched to the breaking point, it can occasionally feel nice living with these characters who are going to feel familiar to any trans person watching this film, even if we’d never ever want to live with these people for more than 55 minutes.
Dog Movie is now available on VOD through Muscle Distribution.
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