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Stray Dogs (2004)

Director: Marzieh Meshkini

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From Time Out London

Further well-meaning fare from the House of Makhmalbaf regarding the parlous situation in Afghanistan: this time, the writer-director is Mohsen’s wife and Samira and Hana’s stepmother, who, a few years ago, gave us the mostly impressive ‘The Day I Became a Woman’. Here, she’s come up with a somewhat slight tale of two kids – and a cute mutt they manage to rescue from local urchins at the start of the film – who are simply trying to survive while their dad and their mother are incarcerated in separate prisons (he as a die-hard member of the Taliban, she because she remarried when he went off to war and he still won’t forgive her). Both boy and girl would like at least to spend the night in their mother’s cell, but if the authorities decide to deny them admission, they’re left to fend for themselves…Visually striking and slightly surreal in the Makhmalbaf mould – a notable example being a ‘house’ out in the desert which is, in fact, merely an old car with a television in it – the film is admittedly fascinating for the glimpses it affords of Afghan life after the Taliban. The sexual politics are still archaic and, judging by a massive dogfight, animals get just as raw a deal as women and kids, though one suspects that, in certain respects, it may already be out of date – set two years after 9/11, the movie was shot in 2003. Overall, however, it’s too contrived, facile and manipulative in its use of children and animals to succeed as anything more than a sentimental fable.

Author: Geoff Andrew

Time Out London Issue 1878

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