Black Dog review – state-of-the-Chinese-nation drama with feelgood furry antics

This isn’t the first film to serve up redemption through a furry emissary – and it won’t be the last. Guan Hu’s Chinese drama-cum-western-cum-state-of-the-nation missive won Un Certain Regard at Cannes this year – but more importantly, its heavy canine quotient meant it also bagged the second prize in the festival’s Palm Dog award. Its heartwarming aspect comes framed with real grandeur, and a stark absurdism and tightly wound sentimentality reminiscent at times of Takeshi Kitano.

Emerging from a long stretch in prison for his part in a murder, Lang (Eddie Peng) gets a job on a dog-catching patrol cleaning up a Gobi desert outpost in advance of the 2008 Olympics. When he finally lays hands on the rail-thin, and possibly rabid, critter that has tormented him since his return, he adopts it – and the animal gives the taciturn former rock star respite from his other woes. His alcoholic father is haunting the remnants of a soon-to-be-demolished zoo, and local kingpin Butcher Hu is seeking amends for his dead nephew.

Hu has most recently overseen a few state-sponsored prestige pics, so it is a surprise seeing him slip into the kind of societally probing work more akin to that of Jia Zhangke (who appears here as the leader of the dog catchers). Initially, the film operates in a similar vein of stifling realism, as Lang slopes around the city’s decaying estates and the charred desert fringes. But there is something innately funny about a squadron of dog-catching minions sprinting after a bevy of hounds; thereafter the director never misses a chance for deadpan framing, like the gangsters catching up with Lang while he is bungee-jumping.

Perhaps, on a personal level, Lang’s irascible new buddy stands for some inner feral trait he must restrain, while the dogs at large represent the dispossessed of China’s economic march forward. The latter aspect is netted in epic, dark-toned compositions of canines sweeping across plazas, and the forlorn inhabitants shot in situ against their crumbling backdrop, largely eschewing closeups until they are absolutely needed. This rigour dissipates a touch in a plotline about a travelling circus, as well as a speculative romance, that comes over a bit Indie Film 101. But the splendid desolation of the vision of China makes the film’s feelgood belly-rubs feel all the more vital.

• Black Dog is in UK and Irish cinemas from 30 August