Dog on Trial (2024)

Dog on Trial (2024) The original french title : Le procès du chien

I’ve seen so many titles for the English version from ‘A dog in court’ to ‘Who Let the Dog Bite?’ to the simplistic “Dog”… but the real title is ‘Dog on Trial’ for those interested. The other titles may be from other films, or they may just be mistakes. Anyway!

Le Procès du Chien, released in 2024, is a comedy co-written and directed by Laetitia Dosch, in her first feature film. Dosch plays a lawyer who defends a dog in court. The film is loosely based on a real-life case in France involving a dog that bit strangers.

Avril, a lawyer with a track record of losing cases, has made herself a promise: she’ll win her next case! But when Dariuch, a client as desperate as his case, asks her to defend his faithful companion Cosmos, Avril’s convictions take over. And so begins a trial that is as unexpected as it is turbulent: the trial of the dog.

Among the dog films, I would have chosen Beethoven (1992), Marley & Me (2008) and of course Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009), which is the only one of the three not to be a comedy film at all, and which tells the true story of Hachiko, the faithful dog who continued to wait for his master in a Japanese station long after his death. It is a remake of a 1987 Japanese film.

When a Frenchwoman makes a film in Switzerland, everything stays French: the actors, the vocabulary (EHPAD, quatre-vingts…). So what’s the point?

Lætitia Dosch examines the place of pets in society. An original film, but not a convincing one. I didn’t like it. Just because it’s based on a true story doesn’t mean it’s any good!

I understand those who call it a turnip, like this person who wrote this comment: “Very crude scenes, I was very uncomfortable with my children. What need is there to insert so much vulgarity into a film that, from the outset, presents itself as ‘family friendly’! As for the rest, it’s very badly acted, or rather very badly ‘overacted’, because there’s so little naturalness in the actress’s acting that it’s hard to believe she’s a ‘professional actor’. That’s it! That’s pretty clear!

But there are also those who loved it, of course: ‘It was THE film of the new season in 2024, directed by Laetitia Dosch.

• It’s a very refreshing first film.
• Funny, but not just funny. This film is much more than that.
• Lætitia Esche, François Damiens, Jean-Pascal Zadi and Kodi play a perfect part.
• Putting a dog on trial may sound crazy, but the story really holds up.
• Kodi is endearing.’ So much for the admiring and laudatory comments.

Personally, I would have loved the film to have been pleasant and light, given that it is almost surreal. It attempts to delve into the bowels of our society and calls animal abuse into question. And while the animal is the central subject, it is also a metaphor for all oppressed beings, all those who are considered objects and on whom we vent our anger. But I think this is abused in a grotesque way.
One critic found Avril’s friendship (the lost cause lawyer who defends the dog threatened with euthanasia) with a little neighbour beaten by his father irrelevant. And yet we are at the heart of a good question posed by the film: why doesn’t our society protect (or protect very poorly) the weakest members of society? Why should some have fewer rights than others?

The dialogue by Laetitia Dosch and Anne-Sophie Bailly, who wrote the screenplay, could have been brilliant and even stronger. When the abused little boy asks his friend why she loves other people, she replies: “Because they’re different from me. They’re all different from me because each person is unique. It’s this difference that enriches me!” Very pretty, very poetic, but it didn’t convince me at all!

But at the same time, the other (in this case the dog) is me! It’s us!
The animal behaviourist (Jean-Pascal Zadi) interprets the dog’s actions intelligently and realistically, right up to the point where he goes into a verbal sexual frenzy that is not Cosmos’s, the dog, but a reflection of his own personal frustrations. And Cosmos’s owner, Dariuch (Jean-François Damiens), angrily turns up in Avril’s office, yapping like an upset animal when she initially refuses to be the dog’s lawyer. Avril herself impulsively punches a threatening motorist, much as Cosmos bit a woman because he thought she was attacking him. All of these elements are well thought out, but turn ridiculous.

I admit that I fully share the philosophy behind this film, but I don’t see it as a comedy. Yes, because it is a comedy (several scenes make you smile slightly), but a bittersweet comedy, to the point of sadness. The treatment is clear: Avril is making a film in which she tells her story and at times acts as narrator, a double mise en abyme since the actress is herself the director of the film, as you have already realised. A call for tolerance, acceptance of others, respect for nature and animals, love and compassion, this film brings it all together with a mixture of humour and sensitivity. But despite all these noble and respectable elements, Laetitia Dosch’s first film is not a great success. It’s possible that I’ve got a real grudge against French films and that there’s hardly anything to do. I’m sorry about that.

After so much politeness and objectivity, I’m going to say what I really think. But if I’ve made you want to see the film, go for it… and don’t read on!

Ah, the tyranny of sheer originality. An absurd premise, a series of poorly written and filmed sketches, lame jokes and freewheeling actors. It’s the kind of auteur cinema you just can’t see any more, pandering to its director’s every whim and convenience, with no rigour, no finesse and no future. It’s pitiful!

The director continually puts herself forward and overdoes it. The subject matter was good, but despite everything, I get the impression that none of the actors believe in their roles.

As the title suggests, there’s nothing here to make a feature-length film, and the film stretches out in clichés and caricatures that make it lose its meaning. The press has described it as a ‘zany, philosophical comedy or legal-philosophical drama’. So be it!

An extremely vulgar film, of no great interest. In fact, it’s a first feature film with no direction whatsoever. It’s a bit hard to understand what Lætitia Dosch is trying to tell us… and not Letitia Deutch as I’ve already seen written!

Watching the trailer, you might expect a film suitable for children, with a good-natured sense of humour, but you’ll see that from the very first words of the film, there’s this notorious vulgarity and these very sexually-orientated remarks, as confirmed by this comment: “Film seen with my 12-year-old daughter, marked as any audience on various sites. We left before the end: shocking detailed sexual comments from the 1st scene, a story of sexual harassment, a child being beaten. The mention of a film not suitable for a young audience should be explicit.”

There’s also this one: “I saw adults and children leaving the cinema and I resisted in my seat by covering my child’s ears and eyes during several very shocking scenes.
This film is not at all suitable for children, not before 11/12…
And as an adult, I found the film very disappointing!”

And here’s another review that made me smile: “Horribly rubbish, script written as the girls ate together. It’s not a comedy! It’s meant to be funny, but it’s barely funny for 30 seconds…. It’s so pathetic! More than half of it is boring filler. Sub-stories are thrown at us that we couldn’t care less about, and we don’t even get to the bottom of! I mean, come on! It’s ridiculous to make such badly written films!”

What’s more, we’re even treated to a comparison between slaves and the lawyer’s dogs to justify her point… which is pretty abominable and pretty far from the supposed message.

After the trial of the dog, the trial of the film! It’s badly acted, it’s not really funny and it deals with wokish subjects for no real reason. I wouldn’t go so far as to complain, as some people do, about the fact that there’s a white woman sleeping with a black man… but it’s not necessarily welcome. Okay, there’s a lot of frustration and probably a bit of electricity in the air, but it makes the film go in a lot of directions without any artistic talent. Admittedly, the underlying subject is an interesting one, but it would have deserved to have been explored in more depth, and not interfered with by scenes whose purpose or end we don’t know.

Exactly: this film has no head or tail, despite the dog! Incidentally, here’s the shortest review of the film I could find: ‘Only the dog is nice!’

Here’s another that’s considerably more elaborate:

“A wacky lawyer, who specialises in hopeless cases, takes on the defence of a dog accused of biting three times. I’d heard about this film coming out on TV by chance and I’d written it down in a corner of my brain. I told myself I’d watch it one day, but not in cinemas, as I’d deserted them ages ago. But you know what? Even without seeing it in the cinema, I had a bad time. So, even though it’s not brilliant (far from it, but I’m a much better audience than you might think), I’ll readily admit that I was seduced for a while. Then I ended up looking at it with a quarter of an eye. The reason? All of a sudden, without saying a word, you’re hit with all the moralizing that goes with it. I’ll let you guess what it is. Lætitia Dosch is adorable, but her “Trial of the Dog” ends up being undrinkable with good-as-it-is and narcissism.

Stereotypical characters, equally stereotypical elements that add nothing to the story, such as an alcoholic father who beats his kid, a woman hitting a man in the street, neighbourhood problems and so on.

The plot is underdeveloped, which is unfortunate because the animal cause is a laudable subject, but in the course of a few jokes, an outline of a trial and a friendship with a neighbour’s son, we quickly run out of time and don’t have time to develop our thoughts on the place of animals in our society.

To conclude:

An absolutely ridiculous opening scene, very disjointed scenes, a lot of zaniness, gags that fall flat, a lot of feminism, omnipresent references to sex, an often moralising tone, almost non-existent directing, and very limited acting by most of the actors. Laetitia Dosch has the excuse of the first film, but I was never totally convinced by her performance. The film takes on serious overtones during the trial, so we’re swimming confusedly between comedy and moralistic drama. Yes, I know: I’ve said that a lot!

If ever, since 2015, animals have been considered sentient beings under the civil code, which had already been the case since 1992 under the criminal code. So this debate on the legal status of animals has come as a bolt from the blue.

“The acting is terrible, the script is totally empty, it’s pointless, and frankly, who cares if a dog attacks people? It’s absurd and there’s nothing comic about it. It’s all bad: narration / dialogue / morals”.

A true story, the outlines of which we catch a glimpse of in the last 5 minutes, which try to bring a few tears to our eyes. A real turnip in all its forms! An absolute wreck. Don’t waste your time!