Dog
Director: Andrea Arnold
Writer: Andrea Arnold
Cast: Joanne Hill, Freddie Cunliffe, Veronica Valentine
Seen on: 6.10.2022

Content Note: animal abuse/animal death

Plot:
A girl (Joanne Hill) goes out to meet a boy (Freddie Cunliffe), despite her mother’s (Veronica Valentine) protestations. The boy is unkind, and takes her money, but it is only when they encounter a stray dog that the girl realises who he really is.

Dog is a very early work from Andrea Arnold and one that can be seen as very directly as a precursor to Fish Tank. It hits equally hard, though it is much less polished. Violence here is an inescapable fact of the girl’s life, and it is heart-breaking to see, despite a couple of moments of levity that the film also finds. It is certainly a short that hints at what came in Arnold’s work afterwards.