Year Of The Dog vs Volver

For my money, there is nothing than can be said about Will Farrell’s tenure on Saturday Night Live that cannot also be said of Molly Shannon’s. Completely fearless, completely weird, not always funny but always interesting, Shannon has not had Farrell’s luck with movies post-SNL. Well of course she hasn’t. Jessica Biehl has the female lead in Adam Sandler’s next movie and Scarlett Johansson is Woody Allen’s new muse. If we’re to believe Hollywood, the most viable comedic female actors are Esquire Magazine’s last two picks for “Sexiest Woman Alive”. Molly Shannon will not be third on the list, of course, but she is a singular talent, and in Mike White’s Year of the Dog, she’s found a perfect script to suit her peculiar impulses.

Shannon plays Peggy, a woman just like a woman you work with. She brings snacks to work, is pleasant and hard-working, has friends at work but not many in life, loves her dog. Peggy loves her dog a lot. Not in any kind of obsessive or perverse way, but you know, plenty. She puts lotion on his feet. Well, he can’t do it himself, can he?

Peggy’s dog is Pencil, and it has to be said: Pencil is fucking cute. He’s a beagle, and he sleeps in Peggy’s bed, and she stands in the kitchen watching him eat just like I do with my dog, because Dogs Eating Crunchy Food is America’s next top reality show, mark my words.

And then, tragically, Pencil is accidentally poisoned, and he dies. What follows is as close a portrayal to actual grief I’ve seen on screen in a long time. Shannon’s Peggy doesn’t have a hysterical, screaming, veterinarian’s nurse-pushing meltdown. She cries in her car, and then spends the next few days glassy-eyed, quiet and exhausted. Hers is not Movie Sadn ess, it’s actual sadness, and if you can think about Molly Shannon as an actor, it’s impressive. If all you can think about is Peggy and her poor, dead Pencil, it’s crushing. Put me in the latter category.

Peggy tries to move on. She goes on a date with her neighbor (John C. Reilly), and even gets a new dog. The new dog is troubled, and less sitcom-cute than Pencil, but comes with a trainer (Peter Sarsgaard) who might just bring more than dog obedience into Peggy’s life, and bring her the joy, companionship and fun she’s been lacking all along.

No. No, that doesn’t happen. Have you ever seen a Mike White movie? Peggy doesn’t get what she wants, at all, in her new men, or her new dog. And so she goes a little crazy. And she does something out of love and obsession that I won’t name here. Year of the Dog is funny, and has that eye-opening performance from Molly Shannon (won’t someone please take this movie as a hint and at least write the woman a decent sitcom?), not to mention fun turns from Regina King and an exceptional Laura Dern. On the other hand, Year of the Dog is practically the movie definition of discomfort, awkwardness and social-outsiderness (I love when movies define words that don’t otherwise have definitions). It can be hard to watch, especially since Mike White has paced the film slowly, with hardly any score, forcing us to look closer at each frame. The closest comparison I can think of is Safe, that weirdo Todd Haynes film that, despite being even more unsettling and awkward than Year of the Dog, contains a performance by Julianne Moore that is one of her best.

I wouldn’t do that to you. I can’t send you out to watch Year of the Dog, with its intense sadness and misplaced love, and then have you come home to Safe. Instead, I recommend you watch Volver, which also contains a glassy-eyed heroine trying to move on with her life. Volver, however, was directed by Pedro Almodovar, so it’s ridiculous and fun, everything’s splashed with bright colors, the food looks great, and the Molly Shannon part is played by Penelope Cruz in a push-up bra.

Cruz is Raimunda, a mother and amateur cook with a complicated family life. Her husband is a brute, her daughter sullen and depressed, her sister resentful, her mother a ghost (this is Almodovar, after all). Raimunda is faced with disposing of a body (someone has died, accidentally—maybe—off camera, but Cruz’s expressive face tells us all we need to know about the crime scene). She manages to hide it, for a time, in a local out-of-business diner she’s watching for a friend. When a visiting film crew wants catering, Raimunda does what anyone would do: she opens the diner and sets up shop, despite the corpse in the freezer.

Raimunda’s food is a hit, but the skeletons (literal and figurative) in her closet are bound to come out soon. Cruz gives an unexpectedly vibrant performance. She’s vava-voomishly sexy, sings well, is funny, and cries more than any movie character I can recall. Cruz’s Raimunda is the goods, man, and she can cook to boot.

Pedro Almodovar, as he’s done in his previous films, populates Volver with women (Volver only has a couple male characters, including the corpse), and gives them full lives to lead. Volver is full of superstition (no one questions the appearance of the ghost), and feels like a family legend told around a holiday dinner table. Unlike Year of the Dog, Volver is decidedly cinematic, and thus I was able to watch it a little less vicariously. A dead pup in the backyard? Heartbreaking. A dead body in a freezer, a ghost across the hall? Well that can be heartbreaking too, but I don’t have to hug my dog afterwards.

Year of the Dog: B
Volver: A-