A dog-eat-dog underworld

By Nicholas Barber

Biting the hand
Rest easy: Dogman is not another superhero movie, but an Italian low-life tragicomedy from Matteo Garrone, the director of “Gomorrah”. Its hapless anti-hero is Marcello (Marcello Fonte, above), a scrawny dog-groomer who is stuck in a desolate concrete suburb on the edge of Rome but who is happily devoted to his daughter and canine customers. The trouble is that he’s also devoted to Simoncino (Edoardo Pesce), a neighbourhood thug with fists the size of boxing gloves and a head that looks like it’s made of breezeblocks. Marcello supplies him with cocaine and drives his getaway car but gets nothing but bullying in return. Still, no dog can be kicked for ever without eventually biting his owner. Audiences will be desperate for Marcello to rebel against the hulking sociopath who holds his leash, but Garrone’s savage fable asks why he put up with the abuse in the first place and how complicit he is in Simoncino’s crimes.
On release: Oct 19th (UK)

Thick as thieves
Shoplifters will steal your heart. The winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival in May, this beautifully acted, bittersweet drama is written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda. It introduces a rag-tag family scraping by on the margins of Tokyo society. The matriarch (Sakura Ando) works in a launderette, her husband (Lily Franky) puts in shifts on a building site while their daughter (Mayu Matsuoka) clocks on at a peep show. The family supplements its income by stealing supermarket groceries and claiming benefits it isn’t entitled to. They would be condemned in the tabloids as crooked scroungers but Hirokazu’s affectionate film lets us see how kind and decent they are. In time, their cluttered bungalow comes to feel less like Fagin’s den and more like a haven of gentleness and warmth. This unconventional idyll can’t last, of course. So it’s no surprise when the authorities barge in on the family. What is surprising is how deeply you care when it happens.
On release: Nov 23rd (UK & US)