Junkyard Dog

A film set in a small village in southern France. Dog and Mirales have been friends since childhood. There is nobody else in the village; they are around eighteen and have nothing to do. Their days are the same. They sit on a wall, smoke, drive about, and come back to the same place in the evening. Mirales talks. He jokes constantly, reads, plays with words, and humiliates his friend without stopping. Dog is silent. He does not answer back and has accepted this as a form of friendship. Then Elsa arrives. She has come for the summer and grows close to Dog. The balance breaks. Mirales cannot bear it and his jokes turn harder. From there the film is a story of separation. A night, a fight, an insult and a silence. What the narrative is interested in is not friendship but being stuck: both will stay in the village and both know it; the possibility of Dog leaving is the real threat to Mirales. Mirales's home is a separate line. He looks after his mother and is in no position to leave. The dog is the narrative's emblem. Mirales keeps one, treats it badly, and the film takes its title from that. The dialogue is the film's strength. The speech is written in the region's own idiom and the actors really are from there. Raphaël Quenard was named most promising actor at France's national cinema awards for this part. Anthony Bajon, Raphaël Quenard and Galatea Bellugi are in the cast. Jean-Baptiste Durand wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes stories about provincial youth and dialogue-led French films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for incident; almost nothing happens across the narrative and the ending is a small stirring.