"People are so cruel" Seidl's Dog Days review

After seeing Animal Love I wanted to see more Ulrich Seidl movies, so I started with Dog Days (Hundstage). I've waited a day to see if my thoughts could come together on it, and they can't yet. The film follows six people in Vienna, in the suburbs, in the heat of the summer. All six people are extremely isolated despite their relationship status. One widowed man manipulates his housekeeper into being just like his dead wife ("wear her dress, the green one, it was her favorite"), a divorced woman who still lives with her ex attends mass orgies but when you see her alone in her room you know she's empty. You see another woman preparing herself for her husband/boyfriend/significant other by shaving herself in front of the mirror. There are many lingering shots of people alone staring at themselves, sitting in their underwear, not moving. These shots are incredible. The best ones are the images of people sitting outside in their swimsuits baking under the sun. The colors are incredible and the staging of the shots are perfect. It's like looking at a photograph.

I really enjoy films about depressing solitary characters, but I'm having difficulty with this one because of the amount of abuse in it. With the exception of the divorced orgy woman, all the females in the show are verbally or sexually abused (or both). I was talking to Graham the other day about how I don't feel right supporting or viewing films with rape scenes in them, and if it's ever 'ok' to watch a film with an explicit rape scene. Graham said that you can't deny the existence of rape in reality so perhaps it's ok to be in film; however, most films can't appropriately handle a rape scene without making it vulgar. I said that most viewers aren't able to watch those scenes without sexualizing much of what they are seeing on the screen. As in, it is difficult to separate seeing intercourse on the screen and the fact that its forced and very much unwanted. This film doesn't have any outright rape, but it has some scenes that are very very very uncomfortable to watch. There are a few scenes of a young man beating his girlfriend and calling her a whore, despite her having done nothing 'wrong.' *Spoiler Alert*The worst scene seemed to last forever, where the woman who had shaved for her sig. other awaits his arrival by remaining bent over a chair in lingerie. He comes home, and has a friend with him. He doesn't tell her this person is there, says lots of nasty sex stuff to her, and then has his friend fondle her without her knowing its another person. They then proceed to force her to get drunk and beat the shit out of her. Thankfully you don't see the worst of the beating, but you definitely see some really horrid shit.End Spoiler



So I don't know how to handle this personally. I thought the film was very good. I loved the camera work, the imagery, and I was invested in the characters. However, how can I watch what I just saw? And was the way Seidl handled the abuse 'acceptable?' And what does 'acceptable' mean anyway? Have I ever seen a movie that handles sexual and physical violence in a way that isn't glorifying the violence? These are questions I haven't been able to answer yet and I'm not sure if I'll be able to. I think other than the scene I mentioned above, the film handled the violence well, or at least in a way that I could stomach. I'm going to watch a few more Seidl films and see what I think overall. And I'm giving this one four stars on netflix (out of five).