The lawyer Avril (Laetitia Dosch) is a self-proclaimed “specialist for hopeless cases”. The conviction that even those who are obviously guilty in hopeless trials always have reasons and background for their clearly proven actions seems to form the foundation of their work. Unfortunately, she never actually wins a case, and at some point that goes against the grain of her boss Jérôme (Pierre Deladonchamps) – which he comes out about after telling Avril in detail about his sex life. So Avril urgently needs a trial that she can definitely win. And that's why she initially rejects the case of the visually impaired Dariuch Michowski (François Damiens) and his dog Cosmos. Only to be unable to say no when the adorable promenade mix spreads out on her desk.
Cosmos is sentenced to euthanasia after biting the face of the Portuguese housekeeper Lorene (Anabela Moreira) – the law is completely clear, with no room for doubt or extenuating circumstances. Another one of those hopeless cases Avril loves to argue. But then she comes up with a legal trick, and by being able to grab a frustrated judge by his professional honor (or rather: vanity), she even gets away with it: in a trial that has no precedent since the Middle Ages, she does not defend the dog Cosmos, as otherwise legally provided, as an object owned by the holder, but as an individual. Just like a human…
Who can resist this very special and very sweet client?
The plot is actually vaguely based on an authentic case from the early 1900s. The fate of the vicious Hovawart dog Chalom was being litigated in several instances in the Swiss canton of Vaud. Before he was euthanized in 2016, his owner even considered taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. A nice starting point for the legal what-if fantasy that Laetitia Dosch, known as an actress from films by Justine Triet and Catherine Corsini, plays out in her directorial debut. A material that offers all sorts of things and could be staged just as well as a warm-hearted comedy, as a bright satire or as a moral-philosophical courtroom film. However, Dosch decides to cram all of these approaches into the mere 80 minutes of “Guilty”, and that makes her film somewhat breathless.
The film changes tones at breakneck speed right from the start, plunging into shrill slapstick here and then suddenly and briefly opening up a darkly humorous abyss before it goes back to the legal action. There is also still room for a subplot about Avril's not always age-appropriate friendship with the eleven-year-old neighbor boy Joachim (Tom Fiszelson), who is probably abused at home. And when the animal trainer Marc (Jean-Pascal Zadi) finds out that the accused dog is probably a sexist, the buzzword bingo really begins.
If you want to treat a dog like a human in court, then you have to come up with very special methods of communication.
It's important to give “Dog Guilty” credit for the fact that the material and the way in which it is told is completely original – you can't remember having seen a film like it before. However, that doesn't necessarily automatically mean that everything about it would work. Of course, disparateness is part of the concept here, and it is absolutely desirable that the different moods do not merge into one another, but rather are shot apart and collide like they come from different films. And yet you may not find “Dog Guilty” to be entirely successful, because even the pleasantly short running time of 80 minutes drags on a bit in the second half of the film. At least until the rather callous final twist – or is it really one? – then released from the cinema reconciled.
And the idiosyncratic humor that more or less ties all the mood and tempo changes together into a structured whole isn't always apparent – some things in “Dog Guilty” simply seem like private jokes that don't necessarily translate to outsiders. But while these are all valid, they are also largely negligible points of criticism that should not obscure the fact that “Dog Guilty” has become a pretty unique film. An original, personal and (at times perhaps even a bit over-)ambitious directorial debut from a filmmaker whose next work is definitely awaited with excitement.
Conclusion: Not everything works in actress Laetitia Dosch's directorial debut, and some of the rapid changes in tempo and mood seem like they were thrown together from different films. But this shattered quality is ultimately part of the aesthetic concept of “Guilty as a Dog”, a rather unique blend of ethical court film and lurid satire. The very specific humor of the subject and the production will certainly not be accessible to everyone, but you should definitely give this charming and original film a chance.
We saw “Guilty” as part of the 19th Around the World in 14 Films Festival.