Who let the dogs out?

My last M4 before the Mets' championship season

La Sapienza

FF

Two couples, Alexandre (Fabrizio Rongione) and Aliénor (Christelle Prot), middle-aged, married, French, mutually habituated but fatigued, he an architect, she a social engineer for the Parisian banlieus; and Goffredo (Ludovico Succio) and Lavinia (Arianna Nastro), young, brother and sister, Italian (Piedmontese), he eighteen and an architect to be, she younger and frail but coruscant, mutually devoted, with a faint hint of incest.

The action: Alexandre tries to revivify a Borromini book project by touring the architect's works; instead, he encounters the ephemerally idealistic Goffredo, who reminds him of the importance of light and love. Meanwhile, their other halves share parallel discoveries. Hey, it's European: there doesn't have to be a car chase. Puzzling, lovely, unhurried, surprisingly sweet. Written and directed by Eugène Green

L'enlèvement de Michel Houellebecq (The kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq)

FF

The French auteur provocateur plays himself in a brilliantly absurd comedy of a gang that can't think straight, making no attempt to disguise themselves from the victim (who helpfully points out that in a novel that would mean that they were planning to kill him) or to conceal their location. Worse, they find out that Houellebecq seems to have no one who wants him back enough to pay enough to cover the wine and liquor he's consuming and the local hooker they procure for him. The worst kidnappers since . . . well, we'll get to that in a moment.

Fehér isten (White god)

IFC

No humans were harmed, much, in the making of this extraordinary film, which Disney and Tarantino might have collaborated on--a sort of canine Spartacus. I'm glad I'd read a good deal about the film beforehand, so that I knew that the sequences of countless dogs racing down the streets of Budapest benefited from zero digital enhancement and (even more important) that the 2 participants in the dogfight are best friends and were playing as dogs will play, editing and fake blood fully responsible for the horror of it.

It's a film that so immerses you in a foreign idiom--yes, even more than the first 2 films of the day--that standard critical judgments seem suspect, even as you can't help asking yourself questions like: does knowing from the start that the filmmakers found adoptive owners for every street dog used in the film make it a better film? Well, no, of course not: but it makes it impossible not to cut them every slack.

Fortunately, little slack is needed; the worst problem I had with the film was that one of the two dogs sharing the lead role of Hagen has a bit more Shar Pei in him, and thus a wrinklier forehead. The dogs' work is brilliant, amazing even, and the humans aren't bad, either, especially Zsófia Psotta (maybe 12? I read a lot about the film, but I learned little about anyone on two legs) as Lili, the only trustworthy human in Budapest.

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

IFC

Based on a debunked Japanese legend (appropriately enough), the film follows a young Tokyo woman who is convinced that the brothers Coen were serious in the caption in the opening frames of Fargo that brands the story as true.

Rinko Kukichi, barely more verbal than in Babel and equally riveting, plays the titular adventurer, whose adventures take her to snowy Minnesota, an Oz of mostly well-meaning nonwizards. (Huh! True fact: while I was writing that sentence, "Upon Closer Inspection" by Christina Abbott came up in the iPod mix of music discovered on the New Haven Green, the song containing the line "This sure isn't Kansas; you sure ain't the Scarecrow.")

It's an engaging film, and I'm a fan of the source (whose very score seems to be mined for this one), but I'm not sure how much there is actually there. Also, is the debt to Fargo and the Coens so obvious that they (they: brothers David and Nathan Zellner, who cowrote, David directing) don't even need to mention it in the credits? 'Cause I didn't notice any thanks for, say, letting them use considerable footage.

Oh, and one other cranky note: twice Kumiko phones her mother in Japan, the first time before her mother has any idea that her daughter isn't in Tokyo. It's the middle of the night in Minnesota, so let's say 3am. Kumiko tells her mother she called because she couldn't sleep. Now if your kid calls you at 5pm your time and says she can't sleep, wouldn't you ask why she's trying to sleep at that hour? And if she calls you a few days later at 2 or 3am your time, wouldn't that seem noteworthy? Apparently this film exists in a world without time zones.

Trailers

• About Elly--Kinda like Laura, but in the Middle East instead of on the Upper East Side. Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, The Past).
• Dior and I--High fashion doc; whee.
• Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock & Roll--That pretty much says it.
• I Am Big Bird--I hope this doc isn't followed by embarrassing revelations like the Elmo one was.
• Das große Museum (The great museum)--Specifically the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna.
• Salad Days--Well, hell, I gotta see this, 'cause I didn't even know D.C. had a punk scene.
• Clouds of Sils Maria--All About Eve, with Juliette Binoche as Margo, Chloë Grace Moretz as Eve, and Kristen Stewart splitting the difference.
• Soul Boys of the Western World--Admit it: you've been praying for a Spandau Ballet doc.