As the Venice Film Festival enters its final phase, the competition throws up perhaps its most unknown quantity as celebrated New York City polymath Laurie Anderson brings her first feature-length experiment to the Lido. Heart of a Dog is essentially a highly personal and vaguely enlightening piece of video art that meditates on the life and death of the director’s dog Lolabelle.
The affable terrier is the star. Anderson introduces her through a dream she had of giving birth to the dog — remembered in an odd comic book digital animation. Next we get a shot from the window of her Manhattan apartment, a view over the West Side Highway. Here we see the first of many segues into ponderings on post-9/11 New York. She recalls the white ash that covered everything when the towers fell in 2011 and the hectic disorder that followed. Seeking to avoid that “mess” and “noise” (her words) she took Lolabelle to the mountains in California. There she watched on as a hawk attempted to swoop down and attack the dog. Lolabelle escaped unscathed but apparently had a revelation. As Anderson sees it, it was as if she hadn’t considered the sky to be threatening before. You can see where this is going.
Heart of a Dog seems to be tackling these things a little lightly. Anderson cuts from a green-filtered GoPro on Lolabelle (dogs are said to see in shades of yellow and green, don’t you know) to a green CCTV screen. She begins to ponder these contemporary issues of privacy, data collection and the NSA but the film (at a sprightly 75 minutes) never really spends a great deal of time on anything. At its best, it’s a charming eulogy to an old friend, with Anderson skipping between formats with wit and grace, meditating on death and what it might be like to be a dog. We see Lolabelle’s daily walk, the neighbors she meets, and her YouTube-ready skills on the piano-pop tunes, Christmas numbers and more experimental stuff. At its worst, it is the detached life lessons of someone who has, frankly, spent the majority of her life in the art scene’s upper echelons.
Anderson uses these drawn-out minutes of Buddhism & Tibetan teachings to meander through thoughts the death of her mother and, only briefly, Lou Reed. The Velvet Underground singer — who was her partner for over two decades — is, understandably, left as an elephant in the room for the most part.
Music has always been the artist’s main passion and, indeed, the score remains her film’s strongest card. Anderson arranges a selection from her back catalogue with lush electronic and instrumental compositions, as well as, naturally, the famed piano work of Lolabelle. The visuals, however, look more suited to the gallery wall. We get some interesting family footage on super 8 that Anderson slows down and rejigs a little, but for the most part it’s low quality digital imagery put through some quite cheap-looking filters — Those of the faux cracked celluloid or endless raindrops variety. That’s not to say such things can’t be memorable but, frankly, the results here are far from inspiring.
Despite these misgivings, there is undeniably great charm to Anderson’s spirit and wit, not to mention a pleasant lilt to her Illinois-via-NY voice. If you dig Laurie Anderson, you’ll probably dig this. However, the unconverted should approach with caution.
Heart of a Dog premiered at the Venice Film Festival and will be released on October 21st.