EIFF 2014: Stray Dogs

Stray Dogs is an existentialist study of human endurance presented in two acts. Both are spectacular. The first follows a man (Tsai’s go-to leading man Kang-sheng) and two children living rough on the streets of Taipei. He makes a pittance as a human billboard by day, the family bed down each night in makeshift shacks. Their predicament isn’t rendered in the aesthetic of grim social realism, however. Instead each frame pops with colour and detail; image and content are pleasantly at odds. This cognitive diffidence is carried into Tsai’s form: long, observational static shots are married to brutal edits. Each cut teleports us to a new time (day to night), a new location (indoor to outdoor), a new eye-focusing colour (electric blue to banana yellow). We’re left to fill in the ellipses.

The second act takes a turn to the expressionistic as the family find themselves in a spacious apartment where the water damaged concrete walls resemble industrial modern art. A fairy godmother figure who made cameos in the first act has been replaced by an ice queen matriarch. Are they better off in this beautifully brutal otherworld? Tsai gives us the answer in a heartbreaking 15 minute final shot on Kang-sheng’s face, his eyes, like the crumbling walls, weeping.