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With faint echoes of Chaplin and Ozu, Stray Dogs is a demanding, bittersweet meditation on the people who fall through society's cracks.
In the desperate streets of bustling Taipei, a beleaguered single father (Lee Kang-sheng) works as a human billboard, holding a sign advertising luxury apartments. His children, meanwhile, roam the parks and streets until he finishes. Then they eat together, and go to sleep in an abandoned building. As the father breaks down, a woman at a local supermarket takes the children under her wing.
Minimal and meticulous, director Tsai Ming-liang (Journey to the West, MIFF 14) has built a formidable film of glacial movement, a family portrait of extended set-piece scenes, composed with an artist's eye and displaying a remarkable humanity.
Venice Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner.
"Tsai Ming-liang's rumored swan song, Stray Dogs, betrays unparalleled formal rigor, taken to extreme ends unique even amongst most contemporary cinema." – Keyframe