There's nowhere bleaker than the seaside when the fun stops and it looks a while since anyone enjoyed themselves in the rundown setting for Matteo Garrone's brutally sad saga. Castel Volturno also provided the backdrop to The Embalmer and there are echoes of that equally sobering story in this unflinching and similarly fact-based depiction of a naive nobody paying the price for trying to be one particularly undeserving man's best friend.
Garrone will forever be known for Gomorrah and he once again considers the extent to which crime seeps into the lives of ordinary people, as Marcello Fonte places greater value on his one-sided liaison with bruising loser Edoardo Pesce than he does his bond with the neighbours with whom he drinks and plays five-a-side and his relationship with nine-year-old daughter Alida Baldari Calabria, with whom he goes scuba diving and competes in dog shows. Even though he deals a little coke, it's hard to think of a man less suited to crime. After all he climbs back into one burgled house to rescue a yapping chihuahua from the freezer.
But Fonte has that trusting simplicity that prompted boorish strongman Anthony Quinn to take cruel advantage of Giulietta Masina in Federico Fellini's La Strada. Consequently, he remains convinced that he can tame Pesce in the same way he can pacify a snarling mutt. But, even though this requires a degree of delusional machismo (or the tough love of Pesce's no-nonsense mother, Nunzia Schiano), it’s tough to buy Fonte's post-prison transformation when, feeling betrayed for keeping shtum by Pesce over the burglary that put him away, he resolves to seek revenge. Nevertheless, with Fonte and Pesce making a hideously grotesque double act, this remains a savagely compelling study of trust, honour and folly.