The complicity between a man and a petanero dog

The starting point of Black dog It could be that of a western or one noir. Lang (Taiwanese star Eddie Peng), a middle-aged man recently released from prison, returns to his village on the edge of the desert. He's a man of few words, but exudes an undeniable aura, heightened by the motorcycle he rides. His chances of rebuilding his life depend on confronting the power of the local gangster group and the man who accuses him of killing his nephew.

But Black dog It takes place in contemporary China, in a small post-industrial city in the Gobi region, when the Asian giant is about to give in to the pride of hosting the Olympic Games. Guan Hu adds a post-apocalyptic layer to this whole ungainly scenario: the area is full of packs of petanos that sow chaos, so the government pays whoever they capture. However, the protagonist decides to establish a bond with the black quisso of the title that he initially wanted to chase. The director thus updates a classic archetype, that of the outcast with his own moral code, assimilating him to the stray dog frowned upon by a society obsessed with appearances and control. Jia Zhangke, the director of the recently released Adrift, appears as an actor in Black dog, as if with his presence he confirmed the connection of his cinema with this original proposal from a much less known colleague of his generation, but one that is worth discovering.