Dog Sweat | Review

With the recent arrests of yet more Iranian filmmakers, it’s a wonder that another illegally produced film has managed to see the light of day, yet Hossein Keshavarz’s debut, Dog Sweat, has emerged in hopes of showing the youthful country of Iran with sexually charged verisimilitude, without the forced application of falsely implied religious and moral focus. While the film manages to bravely sidestep its formidable imposers, its actors’ inexperience and often awkward dialog fails to create a truly engaging social unveiling, often feeling more like a day time soap opera than the politically challenging drama it wants to be.

Following the lives of six young adults as they navigate the tricky romantic waters of Iranian culture, the film finds them each challenging different social norms for the sake of their own happiness. The characters occasionally intermingle, sharing acquaintances or relatives, but mostly their lives play out in parallel. One woman dreams of being a pop singer, even illegally recording a studio track, but eventually submits to her mother’s wishes of an arranged marriage. Her eventual husband finds himself in a similar situation, his mother emotional crumbling as she witnesses his obvious homosexual feelings for his close friend. Among the other youths, promiscuity or general youthful freedom is the central goal. They wander the city looking for a place to be alone or day dream of a home not encumbered with social and religious restrictions.

Keshavarz makes it clear that Iranian youth should be allowed the right to choose their destiny, free of outdated moral codes, but his weak delivery does little to support his weighty thesis. In the film’s promotional synopsis it states that it employs “the subversive urgency of cinéma vérité,” instantly setting up false expectations. Spiritually Keshavarz follows through. It’s clear that he wanted to capture the true feelings of his fellow frustrated Iranians, but stylistically there is very little substance one might call vérité. Nearly every scene feels slightly staged, and two of the lead actresses either have really awkwardly growing hair or are wearing really bad whigs, visually breaking any sense of reality. Keshavarz tries hard to weave his multiple story-lines together with overlapping dialog and source music cuts, but it all feels a bit slipshod.

The carelessness felt in the film may or may not be due to the guerrilla nature of the production and its looming illegality. Everyone involved in its creation is at risk of being imprisoned and banned from film making if caught, so its many flaws may have been unavoidable. That said, Dog Sweat‘s got a variety of issues, ultimately putting politics before storytelling. In and of itself, this is commendable, but in the big picture, it’s a flawed film about restricted sexuality that lacks both the danger of promiscuity and the emotion of young romance.

Rating 2 stars