Dog Days (Hundstage) poster & wallpaper

Alfred Mrva, Erich Finsches, Franziska Weiss

Austrian director Ulrich Seidl picked up the Grand Special Jury Prize at the 2001 Venice Film Festival for his first film that tracks the distasteful exploits of run-of-the-mill individuals. Six separ...( read more  read more... )ate but interestingly entangled accounts tell the story of the troubling but poignant lives of unhappy people living within the seemingly blissful confines of their similar suburban dwellings.

Flixster Users

72% liked it

1,888 ratings

Critics

48% liked it

33 critics

Unrated, 121 min.

Directed by: Ulrich Seidl

Release Date: January 1, 2001

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DVD Release Date: April 13, 2004

Stats: 109 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (109)

  • KLFilmmaker
    May 19, 2007
    KLFilmmaker
    A real downer that drags quite abit. Bad characters in uncomfortable situations.
  • deano
    April 9, 2009
    deano
    Quite perfect film about life in Vienna, Austria. This film isn't for the faint of heart. It's like Happiness with explicit sex and a less optimistic view of humanity. There's animal poisoning, a strip-tease from a senior citizen, an orgy 'esque' bathouse in a shopping cen...( read more)tre, anal candle penetration, and the molestation of the mentally incompetent.
    Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl has no interest in redeeming humanity here. And why should he? This film features excellent performances from all involved, is always interesting, and is probably the most intelligent social statement to be made on film in awhile.
  • Soundsofmadness
    October 17, 2008
    Soundsofmadness
    No thankyou - Not interested
  • divinetrash
    October 15, 2008
    divinetrash
    It's a very thin line between wanting to turn this movie off and laughing histerically-- I fall under the latter category, which I'm not sure how exactly it makes me feel. The characters are strange and annoying (I wanted to kick that hitchhiker in the face), yet completely fasci...( read more)nating.
  • jonrmcmahon
    June 9, 2008
    jonrmcmahon
    A few good concepts are stifled by the length and direction.
  • fifo35
    March 24, 2008
    fifo35
    This film has got to be ranked as one of the most disturbing and arresting films in years. It is one of the few films, perhaps the only one, that actually gave me shivers: not even Pasolini´s Sálo, to which this film bears comparison, affected me like that. I saw echoes in the fi...( read more)lm from filmmakers like Pasolini, Fassbinder and others. I had to ask myself, what was it about the film that made me feel like I did? I think the answer would be that I was watching a horror film, but one that defies or even reverses the conventions of said genre. Typically, in a horror film, horrible and frightening things will happen, but on the margins of civilized society: abandoned houses, deserted hotels, castles, churchyards, morgues etc. This handling of the subject in horror is, I think, a sort of defence mechanism, a principle of darkness and opacity functioning as a sort of projective space for the desires and fears of the viewer. So, from this perspective, Hundstage is not a horror film; it takes place in a perfectly normal society, and so doesn´t dabble in the histrionics of the horror film. But what you see is the displacement of certain key thematics from the horror genre, especially concerning the body and its violation, the stages of fright and torture it can be put through. What Seidl does is to use the settings of an everyday, middle class society as a stage on which is relayed a repetitious play of sexual aggression, loneliness, lack and violation of intimacy and integrity: precisely the themes you would find in horror, but subjected to a principle of light and transparency from which there is no escape. It is precisely within this displacement that the power of Seidl´s film resides. Hundstage deals with these matters as a function of the everyday, displays them in quotidian repetition, rather than as sites of extremity and catharsis - a move you would encounter in said horror genre. One important point of reference here is Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder also had a way of blending the political with the personal in his films, a tactics of the melodrama that allowed him to deal in a serious and even moral way with political issues like racism, domination, desire, questions concerning ownership, sexual property and control, fascism and capitalism etc. Seidl´s tactic of making the mechanisms of everyday society the subject of his film puts him in close proximity with Fassbinder; like this German ally, he has a sort of political vision of society that he feels it is his responsibility to put forward in his films. During a seminar at the Gothenburg Film Festival this year, at which Seidl was a guest, he was asked why he would have so many instances of violated, subjugated women in Hundstage, but no instances of a woman fighting back, liberating herself. Seidl replied that some may view it as immoral to show violence against women, but that he himself felt it would be immoral not to show it.
  • afilmbymichaelmargetis
    January 1, 2008
    afilmbymichaelmargetis
    It's nothing brilliant, groundbreaking or innovative, but 'Dog Days' is for some reason an extremely fascinating character study. It's like CRASH tripping on a bad dose of heroin, but not really. It's an Austrian film following the lives of several depressed, deranged and annoyin...( read more)g people and their abusive relationships with each other. It's disturbing, yet very well-acted and it's interesting to watch the crazy little things these characters do. Certainly not for the weak-hearted, this highly pessimistic film offers no conclusion or revelation at the end, we just see the lives of these sordid individuals over the course of two days. Grade: B
  • nonnythedoor
    November 24, 2007
    nonnythedoor
    Very disturbing, strange movie. Why did I watch this?
    Recommended age: 17+
  • jderome1
    June 21, 2007
    jderome1
    Provocative, disgusting by moments, terrifying. More than horror flicks hollywood tries to pull out. A must see.

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Critic Reviews

October 17, 2003
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

A long slog through the slough of despond. full review

View more Dog Days (Hundstage) reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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