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Good boys populate Wes Anderson’s stop-motion drama which opens the 2018 Berlin Film Festival
Dir. Wes Anderson. US/Germany. 2018. 101 mins.
Five abandoned dogs and a 12 year-old boy roam a toxic wasteland in the Japanese archipelago 20 years in the future looking for a lost pet: like all Wes Anderson’s films, Isle Of Dogs is wholly unusual while still being immediately identifiable as a Wes Anderson film. So lush with gorgeous detail it’s like a piece of highly-textured haute couture, there’s also a sharp social message behind the elaborate seams: the dogs are starving, filthy, diseased and quarantined, and only the orphan boy remembers who man’s best friend really is.
When the dogs cheekily break the fourth wall continuously to arch an eyebrow at the camera, few in the audience will be able to resist.
With the exquisite sets practically sitting up and begging to be seen again, Isle Of Dogs is the American director’s second stop-motion animation after Fantastic Mr Fox, and a rarefied experience which, without the strength of Roald Dahl behind the title, may need a stronger marketing push - although the canine stars do have a loud collective bark. (Isle Of Dogs premiered in...