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My Life as a Dog Movie Review

My Life as a Dog is a 1985 Swedish drama film directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Anton Glanzelius. It’s a mostly standard coming-of-age flick that is still advanced in some other areas.

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“You have to compare,

so you can get a little distance from things“

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In the late 50s, young Ingemar is sent away from his sick mother to live with his aunt and uncle. There he meets a town of eccentrics, and learns about love, sexual desire and himself. This is one of those coming-of-age movies that function as a slice of life story while focusing on a lot of narration as well. This type of storytelling is not always my cup of tea, and here certainly it could get off-putting at times, but the movie transcended that with some very strong themes.

Ingemar is a stupendously developed character. This kid feels like a genuine child and not a movie character, which was essential in making the film both more relatable and more believable. Yes, he can be annoying with some of his repeated narrations, but he is also a genuinely tragic hero in a surprisingly dark ark that the filmmakers gave him.

In essence, the film deals with trauma. It’s not the worst of traumas, but still how this kid continues to get mistreated by the adults is at the very least deeply problematic and at the very worst criminal. The fact that the film dealt with the issue of child abuse was brave for the time and it made the film surprisingly touching and powerful.

What bothered me was the repetitiveness of that dialogue, especially the narration. By constantly equating the boy’s struggles with the dog Laika and what happened to her, the movie hammered down its ideas down audiences’ throats way too obviously, especially in that central metaphor of tossing kids from one place to another like you would do to a dog.

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My Life as a Dog, thus, isn’t the most sophisticated movie as it can get both too repetitive and too annoying at times. But it’s well directed, edited and so well acted that it’s mostly a treat for coming-of-age drama fans. It’s just a shame that it felt too episodic and literal at times.