It's a wonderful dog's life

Quill

Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5)
Director: Yoichi Sai
Running time: 100 minutes
Language: Japanese
Currently showing

Now Yoichi Sai directs a dog movie for kids? This is the guy who made "Tsuki wa Docchi ni Deteiru (All Under the Moon)," a picaresque black comedy about a sarEdonic Korean cabby that swept local awards in 1993. Who followed with movies about the lives and loves of a family of hustlers ("Heisei Musekinin Ikka Tokyo Deluxe"), the search for a serial killer ("Marks no Yama"), and the daily round of cons in prison ("Keimusho no Naka"). Sai filmed these and other excursions into the underside of society with a wry wit and sharp eye for realistic detail.

So is he going soft? Selling out? Or, as he wrote in a program note, was he genuEinely intrigued when a producer told him he would like to see "a Yoichi Sai Disney movie?" Yes, and I would like to see Beat Takeshi, who often plays stone-cold killers, teach a kindergarten class. Who does Sai think he's kidding?

But "Quill," which is based on the true story of an exceptional Seeing Eye dog, is not Sai's idea of a joke, sick or otherwise. Instead it is a movie that, as he also wrote, "the whole family can enjoy." And not his "Tokyo Deluxe" family of crooks either.