Sebastián, a man in his thirties, works a series of temporary jobs and he embraces love at every opportunity. He transforms, through a series of short encounters, as the world flirts with possible apocalypse.

‘The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet’ is an intriguing little film from Argentina about a man who experiences a series of life changes as he approaches middle age. That man is Seba (Daniel Katz), an out of work illustrator who is having trouble maintaining a job, partly as he wants to find one that allows him to take his dog along with him. We follow him as he goes from job to job, interacting with a variety of people, often with his trusty companion alongside him.

It plays out as a series of absurdist vignettes, before taking a turn towards the end into something rather deep relating to a pandemic. Incidentally, there does seem to have been a lot of films about this topic recently, or perhaps they’re just coming to the fore more due to the interest in the subject matter. In that sense the film can be split broadly into two parts, the pre-pandemic section that explores some of the contradictions brought up by bureaucracy and people’s hypocrisy, and the second part post-pandemic, that takes this to even greater extremes but with a melancholic edge. Much like the lead character of the recent Greek film ‘Apples’, which is not too dissimilar to this, Seba is a blank slate – things happen to him and he doesn’t seem to be much of an agent in his own fate, but it works for the material.

‘The Dog Who Wouldn’t Stay Quiet’ is an unusual movie but it does carry in it a lot of truth about the peaks and troughs of life, with surprising moments of humour dashed around (and a cute dog!). Like most of these international releases, Curzon Home Cinema is where you can find it.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Ana Katz

Starring: Daniel Katz, Julieta Zylberberg, Valeria Lois, Mirella Pascual and Carlos Portaluppi

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt13648184/