Dogs (2000)

A minirevolution Wrong choices The divorce of ethereal beauty and mystery so common in experimental films In Stephanie Barbers films What begins as devastatingly awkward or tender unfolds itself to show a deceptive strangely rigid literary formalism commented upon by the content The two form and content dance around moving towards and away from each other in the tricky clear dialogue Hyperreflexivity art and love and the role faith plays in each of these The filmmaker writes I myself feel safest around purposefulness can read more clearly an artists work when I trust that choices have been weighed bear meaning This film requires a great deal of faith because it is strange and labile Its deviceness is so apparent as to have left it naked And then so naked as to be perhaps closed again