<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/23/0/0/4240/2832/664/0/75/0/70591f1_1695461795377-dogman-photo-shanna-besson-a-2023-lbp-europacorp-tf1-films-production-tous-droits-reserves-dsc03494-rt.jpg" srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/23/0/0/4240/2832/556/0/75/0/70591f1_1695461795377-dogman-photo-shanna-besson-a-2023-lbp-europacorp-tf1-films-production-tous-droits-reserves-dsc03494-rt.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/23/0/0/4240/2832/600/0/75/0/70591f1_1695461795377-dogman-photo-shanna-besson-a-2023-lbp-europacorp-tf1-films-production-tous-droits-reserves-dsc03494-rt.jpg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/23/0/0/4240/2832/664/0/75/0/70591f1_1695461795377-dogman-photo-shanna-besson-a-2023-lbp-europacorp-tf1-films-production-tous-droits-reserves-dsc03494-rt.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/23/0/0/4240/2832/700/0/75/0/70591f1_1695461795377-dogman-photo-shanna-besson-a-2023-lbp-europacorp-tf1-films-production-tous-droits-reserves-dsc03494-rt.jpg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/09/23/0/0/4240/2832/800/0/75/0/70591f1_1695461795377-dogman-photo-shanna-besson-a-2023-lbp-europacorp-tf1-films-production-tous-droits-reserves-dsc03494-rt.jpg 800w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="Caleb Landry Jones as Douglas in Luc Besson's " dogman.""="" width="100%" height="auto">
LE MONDE'S OPINION – WHY NOT
After presenting DogMan at the Venice Film Festival, Luc Besson has returned in fine form to show his new film in France after suffering a stinging blow from the box-office flops of his movie Valerian (2017), followed two years later by Anna. However, nothing seems to faze the French filmmaker who, with a Balzac-esque destiny, became a captain of industry cultivating exceptional success, political networks and philanthropic work. He climbed to the heights of business and international fame, but in the last few years, fell as hard as he had risen between financial difficulties and standing trial. Down but far from out of the fight, Besson has continued to create projects, keep steady on his path and dream, as he did in the past, of capturing contemporary imagination.
DogMan is clearly all about that and perhaps only that. The pitch, which we assume the director signed off on, is the "incredible story of a child, bruised by life, who finds his salvation through the love of his dogs." Difficult times can lead to introversion: The theme of a wounded childhood, and the proud revenge that follows, has been a touchstone of Besson's imagination since his film Le Grand Bleu (The Big Blue, 1988). Here it is expressed in a kind of grotesque, quintessential way. Besson, the unfortunate son of parents who separated in his early youth, directs DogMan In the same spirit as Orson Welles'd Citizen Kane or Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans.
But he puts his own stamp on an anti-superhero film that could have sprung from the imagination of Tod Browning (The Monstrous Parade, 1932) or Walt Disney (The 101 Dalmatians, 1956). Douglas, a strange creature, occupies center stage, from his abused childhood to his chimerical state as an adult transformed into a pack leader. In the first part of the film, a psychopathic father, who breeds fighting dogs and terrorizes his family, ends up locking Douglas, an unruly child, in the dogs' kennels. Douglas is adopted by the canine species, who return his love better than any human. While trying to protect his companions, his father shoots his son at point-blank range, and he loses the use of his legs.
Now seen as an adult, Douglas is ignored by a beautiful actress he's in love with and accepts the role bestowed on him by his family and society of a freak cloistered in his kennel home. Disabled, there is nothing he likes better than living with his dogs, and at night, performing in drag onstage in cabarets. He will sometimes right a wrong: coming to the defense of an old woman or taking on a gang of drug dealers who terrorize the neighborhood – wild beasts – on whom he sets his dogs and whose vengeance foreshadows the film's final development
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