My Life as a Dog

1985 coming-of-age movie

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 15/20)

Plot: Ingemar is growing up in 1950's Sweden. His father is gone, somewhere near the equator loading bananas, and his mother is dying. Since Ingemar and his brother do nothing but stress out their poor, sick mother, they are sent to an uncle and grandmother for the summer. Ingemar interacts with the family and the odd assortment of townsfolk, begins to discover sexuality, and learns to cope with death.

Sex and death. That's really what life boils down to, and this movie does such a terrific job of showing the discovery of (and the relationship between) both of them through the eyes of a likable kid. This movie's got some quirks (a neighbor who persistently hammers nails into his roof, an old man who has Ingemar read descriptions of ladies' undergarments from a catalog, the uncle who listens to the same record over and over again while building a tiny circular "summer house" in the backyard) but it's also got a great deal of heart and soul. I'm always amazed when there's a movie, usually a foreign one, with a bunch of child actors who manage not to annoy me. The kids in this are great, their performances resembling children at playtime much more than a bunch of kids being directed and trying their best to act. The frequent connections made to Laika the space dog were problematic for me while watching the movie, but after I had a chance to think about it, I realized how important Laika was as an extended metaphor to hold the episodes in the movie together. Apparently, this was Kurt Vonnegut's favorite movie. It makes me wonder whether this is the type of movie that only Hoosiers would like. I doubt it though. Bittersweet and quiet, this one hits you emotionally, not so much with what the characters say (though there is poignancy there) but with great visuals requiring some reading between the lines. There's something about this that forces you to really focus on every little detail, not because you have to but because you want to. It requires you to pour yourself into the movie as it pours into you. I've had this sitting on the shelf for months now because I figured it would be boring. I'm glad I was so wrong.