Horst_In_Translation Review of Animal Love

Animal Love (1996)

NOT an animal documentary, a human documentary

[6/10 · 16 September 2016]

"Tierische Liebe" or "Animal Love" is an Austrian 105-minute film from 1996, so this one has its 20th anniversary this year. I would say it is an early career effort by writer and director Ulrich Seidl, but actually he has worked in film by then already for almost two decades, so this would not be true. In any case, his more recent works have turned him into one of the most successful German-language filmmakers, so it is kinda interesting to see what he did before his big breakthrough. And that was actually a lot. Lets take a look at this one here. First of all, I want to say that I find the German title much more appropriate as it is really animalistic (or brute) love than about animal love what this film here really is about. And the center of the film are clearly the humans, not the animals. The animals are used to depict the humans in a certain way and to give us an insight into their characters through scenes evoked by their pets. As usual with Seidl, there is also always a somewhat dark background (and sexuality) attached to his works. This does not involve bestiality, no worries, but we see a man have phone sex and we hear the woman moaning while his dog sits next to him. Or we see a homeless man walk through the streets and ask for money for his little cute rabbit that he pulls out of his coat. Or we see another man who owns a dog that is very violent and we see how the man deals with a situation like the dog almost killing another dog for example. Do not be mistaken by the title here. This is everything but a family-friendly animal documentary. Do not watch it with your children. There is graphic nudity, there are sex scenes, there is violence. This is actually exactly what you would expect when you hear Uli Seidl makes an animal documentary. Only to the untrained eye, this is really about the pets. This is in fact about the dark abysses of the souls of the pets' owners really. And from that perspective, Seidl did succeed in my opinion. I recommend the watch and I would say the final outcome here is one of the better works from his earlier years, but not on par with what he has done recently. Also you never know how much of it is authentic and real and how much is staged. But that's not a problem. It is interesting in any case. Go see it. And maybe get subtitles because of the thick Austrian accents, even if you are native/fluent in German.