By Shannon L Bowen
Swiss-French actress Laetitia Dosch raises some challenging philosophical questions about sentience and personhood in her directorial debut, which centers on a young attorney and her client, a charismatic pup that goes on trial for biting three people.
A dog is not the same as a table, right? Wrong, at least in the eyes of the law.
Traditionally, judicial systems around the world have recognized two kinds of entities — persons and things — and regarded animals as things. Man’s best friend is no exception. That’s true nearly everywhere, including in Switzerland, which serves as the setting for Dog on Trial (Le Procès du Chien), the directorial debut from Swiss-French actress and writer Laetitia Dosch. (Switzerland is this year’s country of honor at the Cannes Film Market.)
Premiering in Un Certain Regard, Dog is a bittersweet comedy about a spirited young female attorney, Avril, and her client, Cosmos, a charismatic pup that goes on trial for biting three people. If convicted, Cosmos will be put to death, a very real fate for both wild and companion animals who run afoul of human rules — and one of the more acute aspects of the fraught animal-human relationship.