Dogs Don't Wear Pants

Year:  2019

Director:  J-P Valkeapää

Screenplay:  J-P Valkeapää and Juhana Lumme

Starring:  Pekka Strang, Krista Kosonen, Ilona Huhta, Jani Volanen, Oona Airola, Iiris Anttila, Ester Geislerová

Running Time:  105 minutes

Genre:  Drama, comedy

Surgeon Juha (Strang) lives alone with his teenage daughter Elli (Huhta), following the accidental drowning death of his wife and Elli's mother some years before.  While Elli has managed to more or less recover, Juha is still mired in grief and unable to connect with the world.  One night Juha stumbles into an S&M club and encounters dominatrix Mona (Kosonen), who strangles him, causing him to hallucinate his wife.  Juha becomes a regular client of Mona's, finding a new lease of life.  However, his constant desire to push things further disturb Mona, and begin to threaten his daily life.

This pitch-black comedy-drama from Finland is on one level an icy portrayal of grief, and an intriguing portrayal of the world of BDSM.  Pekka Strang is good as the cold surgeon Juha, whose grief is convincing, even if he is not a particularly likeable character, as he constantly pushes away his lonely teenage daughter.  Krista Kosonen is memorable as the dominatrix Mona, who works as a physical therapist in her day job, and develops something of a complex relationship with Juha.  Ilona Huhta is the standout as Juha's increasingly estranged daughter, Elli, who despite her best attempts to connect and reach out to him, loses her father to his new obsession.  The film is stylishly made, with each frame carefully composed, contrasting the sterile hospital where Juha works, the equally sterile interiors of Juha and Elli's home, and the interiors of the S&M club, dimly lit in red, with bright strobe lighting.  This is a film about BDSM and, while it is not as graphic as it could have been, may still be too explicit for some audiences, and there are some brief scenes, such as Juha pulling off his own fingernail and an amateur tooth extraction, which made me look away from the screen.  It certainly won't be to everyone's tastes, nut it is worth checking out.

Krista Kosonen in Dogs Don't Wear Pants