A young woman living on a small island ruled by religion makes discoveries about herself and her own sexuality with the help of her gay friends.
Many people may not realize the fact that LGBTQ people exist outside of modernized society. While being queer is for the most part accepted as a fact of life in America and a lot of the world, there’s still places out there where progressive thinking is limited. This fact is touched upon in Wolf and Dog, but never quite fully realized. In fact, that’s how most of the film feels, with subject matter and themes that require more attention than they get and a storyline that never delves deep enough to deliver on its premise. While it’s a good movie, it’s disappointing that it never transcends those restrictions to become a great one, instead barely touching upon things that I would’ve found more interesting had it been bright to light with a more unflinchingly bold vision.
Cláudia Varejão, who directs and also wrote the script alongside Leda Cartum, makes use of the film’s vivid setting, with plenty of beautiful shots of the island and the locals who live there, but at the same time, it never gets personal enough to be endearing. Too many shots overstay their welcome, and the sexuality of the lead character occasionally feels weirdly objectified, with slow motion female nudity and sequences that could’ve very easily been removed from the film without disrupting the flow of the story. It’s also a bit too fantastical at times, making things tonally awkward when you find yourself wondering how certain things came to be, like how here’s an unusually high concentration of LGBTQ people for this to be a supposed “religious island,” and the themes of religion are never fully addressed as being restrictive or problematic, either. The film kind of meanders without much of a point or a conflict, and it runs on far too long with this aimless trajectory until it just suddenly stops dead.
Ana Cabral is good as the lead character, though her performance doesn’t do much to elevate her character beyond the page. She’s a representation of beauty without substance, with the film lingering on her face and trying to convey a story through visuals that just doesn’t land. Her best friend, however, who is played by Ruben Pimenta, steals the show in every scene he’s in. He’s a real standout and his character is the only one that feels realistic and relatable, even if he also lacks a lot of the emotional depth required to make the film work as a whole. The rest of the cast is just alright and not really noteworthy, and I personally blame the weak script for why these characters fail at illustrating the true dichotomy of strict religion against a progressive LGBTQ community.
The cinematography is beautiful, and the film is definitely gorgeous to look at, even if it doesn’t have a whole lot to offer in the way of important statements or dramatic storytelling. A film can’t survive off of visuals alone, but this one certainly tries. It’s just a shame that it looks so pretty without actually being worth the time spent watching it. Not to mention it would’ve benefited from a better edit, trimming down certain lengthier scenes to shave off about 20 minutes or so to make it a tighter watch.
Considering the untapped well of potential that is traded for a surface level plot, Wolf and Dog is a gorgeous film that has nothing to say, even though it has the perfect stage on which to shout. And if you ask me, a film that squanders its potential is always worse than one that never had any to start with.