Avis des critiques

Black Dog is an absolutely gorgeous, deeply moving film with a beautiful soul, relatable to anyone who’s ever felt trapped, alone and friendless in a bleak and unwelcoming world.

The balance of warmth and deadpan comedy is quite the tightrope walk but Black Dog pulls it off, making the film comparable to the work of Wes Anderson in more ways than one - a shot of a lone wolf on a hilltop will make fans of Fantastic Mr. Fox smile.

[An] excellent, deliberately understated picture... Peng’s performance is physically rather than verbally expressive – he has barely more lines of dialogue than the dog – but Lang’s arc of redemption is explored with heart and humour.

Guan mixes apparently contradictory visual styles, moving between the vast landscapes of a western and the shadowy claustrophobia of a noir, to tell a story that is both sternly satirical and deftly playful.

Guan is clearly a director with a good mix of technique and commitment, plus a healthy eye for the oddball. He’s interested in the stresses of rural depopulation, but doesn’t want to scold his society for too many deeper flaws: his film is strong on bark and less so on bite.

The most striking part of Guan Hu’s Black Dog is its stunning visuals... Set against a beautifully shot desert backdrop that sprinkles in moments of surrealism, [the film] is a remarkable tale of companionship that hits in all the right spots.

Hu has most recently overseen a few state-sponsored prestige pics, so it is a surprise seeing him slip into the kind of societally probing work more akin to that of Jia Zhangke... Initially, the film operates in a similar vein of stifling realism... [And it's] the splendid desolation of the vision of China [that] makes the film’s feelgood belly-rubs feel all the more vital.

Visually, Guan never puts a frame wrong... [Black Dog] is a quirkily defiant portrait of an unlikely friendship blossoming in the unlikeliest of places.

Next to Umberto D., Chinese director Guan Hu may just have made the enduring masterpiece of man-and-dog movies – Citizen Canine, if you will.

[Black Dog] embraces the same premise of countless a noir before it: a lone drifter comes home to start afresh, only to face the ghosts of his troubled past. What’s sensational about Hu’s latest is the way it undercuts that dread to land on an engrossing note that rings wholly, convincingly earned.

Visually stunning... Hollywood seems to put out a new mainstream dog flick every few months... but there’s also a subgenre of international films that treat canines with more depth and artistry. Guan’s strange and seductive new work belongs to the latter pack.

Black Dog isn’t particularly sophisticated or novel in its metaphor or social analysis... But Black Dog works as well as it does because the minimalist camerawork and pacing creates an ideal tension with the film’s inherently goofy premise. And under it all is real love (of animals) and disappointment (in people).