| STRAY DOGS |
 2001 - USADirector:
Catherine Crouch - Reviewed by Linda
Stray Dogs is a southern gothic tale, set in the Appalachian mountains of the mid-20th century. Darla (Turner) is a neglected housewife, with a no-good drunk of a husband (Bill Sage) who is gone for days at a time. She dutifully keeps their one room shack of an isolated house, and cares for their two sons, who, of course, idolize their absent dad. It turns out that Darla's sister-in-law, the manly Jolene (Dot Jones), serves as more of a care-taker to the neglected family than the absent man-of-the-house does. It goes even so far to show that there is a spark of sexual tension between the two women. And the youngest son ends up looking to his aunt as more of a father-figure than his own dad. But then of course, just when this small makeshift family seems to be pulling itself together, Dad comes home... and he's drunk. Despite notably good cinematography and a setting ripe for claustrophobic atmosphere, Stray Dogs suffers from two major problems: the script and the acting. The screenplay has been adapted from the stage, and it shows. As a film, it lumbers along with the stilted dialogue of a poorly constructed community play; the type you would only sit through because a friend of yours created the set design or something. Then there is the acting. Bill Sage is a fine actor, and holds up as best he can with the clunky adaptation. It is as though he is trying to bring the rest of the film up to his level by sheer force of will, but can't quite pull it off. The acting of the others goes progressively down in skill from there, with the youngest boy stealing every scene he's in, Guin somewhere in the middle, and Dot Jones squarely at the bottom of the heap. Jones certainly has the solid-built, but vulnerable gait of a woman who has always been in the shadow of her smarter and craftier brother; but boy-oh-boy, I couldn't help but wince when she spoke. And I wasn't feeling sorry for the character, but sorry for the actress... and that is a big difference. By the end of the movie I was feeling claustrophobic and stifled, just like the characters in the film. But I was feeling this way not because of the ambience of the story, but because of the film itself. |
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Guinevere Turner is one of those film-types that I really want to like. She's
smart and gorgeous, and has become somewhat of an indie poster-girl as an out
lesbian who has taken on roles in edgy flicks like American Psycho and Go
Fish. But despite the fact that I admire the breath of fresh air she has
brought to independent filmmaking, I'm slowly starting to realize that she hasn't proven that she has much range as an actress.
