It’s a miracle that Todd Solondz can still get movies made. He hasn’t made anything close to a hit since Happiness was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in 1999, and despite his first-rate ability to assemble a cast of actors, his off-putting subject matter—pedophilia, rape, suicide, depression—all but ensures that even his modestly-budgeted films routinely lose money. And then there are his battles with the American movie ratings board, which has a history of censoring his work. But thanks to a distribution partnership between IFC and Amazon Studios, Solondz’s new film Wiener-Dog is enjoying a robust advertising campaign and is now in limited release. Could the relatively hip cast, which includes Greta Gerwig and Zosia Mamet, or perhaps the adorable leading canine, make Wiener-Dog a rare crossover hit for Solondz? Does he have anything new to say?
Unfortunately, no. While the film has collected a few positive reviews, it will not go over well with the general public. Solondz tends to provoke strong reactions from viewers, often based on whether they find his work brutal and mean-spirited or compassionate and darkly humorous. Wiener-Dog does amuse sporadically, but is ultimately a rather nasty, vapid piece of work. Four short films are ostensibly united by the recurrence of a dachshund puppy in each, but they never feel of a piece. The dog, central in the first chapter, becomes an afterthought in the subsequent three, and is twice used as a cruel punchline. Solondz has long shown a gleeful disregard for continuity—as when he recast every character in Happiness for its sequel, Life During Wartime, or used eight actors in one role in Palindromes—but here it’s not a display of audacity, just a failure of conceptual imagination.
The puppy begins her journey with an affluent family living in a New Jersey suburb—a favorite target for Solondz, a Newark native. The parents are played by the playwright Tracy Letts and a very funny Julie Delpy, who resorts to a tall tale about dog rape to convince her son that his new friend has to be spayed. Solondz loves writing conversations between inquisitive children and their candid yet blunt parents, so this first part of Wiener-Dog hums along nicely with familiar humor and a typically unsparing view of upper middle-class life. But the litany of sad-sacks and misfits and failures that follows reflects an increasingly unbecoming bitterness that’s directed at just about everyone and everything, like a buckshot blast of satire. The film pays lip-service to immigration and xenophobia, Eric Garner, the transgender community and installation art, but it has nothing to say about any of it. It feels like a rather transparent attempt to tap into the zeitgeist without actually engaging with it in any meaningful way.
The most inspired touch is casting Gerwig as Dawn Wiener, a character first introduced in Welcome to the Dollhouse (and subsequently killed off). Gerwig is always charming when playing adult children, but here she uncovers a much darker side to her persona in what may be an even sadder performance than the seemingly more upbeat one she gave in last year’s Mistress America. The rest of the cast, mostly wasted, includes Ellen Burstyn as a cranky, dying woman and Danny DeVito as a failed filmmaker teaching at NYU (a spiritual stand-in for Solondz, though the portrait is less revealing than narcissistic). On the surface, Wiener-Dog has much in common with the director’s other work, and thanks to ace cinematographer Edward Lachman (one of the best in the business), it’s one of his best-looking films; but it’s petty, mean stuff and doesn’t inspire much confidence in Solondz going forward.
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