Who Let The Dogs Out? And Who Allowed Love on a Leash To Be Made?

Dziga Vertov's works have always been challenging and that's especially true of Love on a Leash, a hodgepodge of footage of a canine and a woman that, among many other unorthodox filmmaking touches, frequently eschews audio entirely over sequences that should typically have dialogue or music. Clearly, Vertov is using this mechanism to speak to the emptiness of the human condition, there is truly nothing in the souls of these characters so why should they be accompanied by sound or music? It's a bold approach to filmmaking that's accompanied by similarly off-kilter choices like returning to a pair of ducks swimming in a pond as a sort of visual motif. There's also a disjointed style of editing that sees entirely new sequences beginning before you even realize prior sequences were over.

It's all so unusual and in execution, it has a mixed track record, sometimes it feels like Vertov's tendencies to upend viewer expectations ends up resulting in imagery and editing that's more incoherent than evocative. But...alright, enough with the charade, the poster above makes it clear Love on a Leash is not a Dziga Vertov film. Hailing from an avant-garde filmmaker like Vertov would at least help partially explain the madness that lies in wait in watching Love on a Leash. A high-concept romantic(?)-entity about a woman who falls for a man who turns into a dog during the daytime,  Love on a Leash takes this seemingly simple enough concept and renders it as confusing of a style as possible. It's a movie that will leave you like the Grinch on Christmas morning: puzzling and puzzling until your puzzler is sore.

Prince (Aneese Khamo) is the man who has been cursed to be a dog until he can find true love, though that's not made explicitly clear at the outset of the story. As the film begins, we're treated to footage of a Golden Retriever just walking around a park while Aneese Khamo drops failed attempts at comedy through voice-over dialogue. One of these attempts is one of the most bizarre gay panic jokes I've ever encountered in a movie. Love on a Leash just starts with a dog walking around talking about how horny he is and it doesn't get any less peculiar from there. Soon, we're introduced to Jana (Jana Camp), who eventually takes Prince home with her as her new pet.

Jana lives a distraught life straight out of a Truman Capote play. Her mother and friends are constantly pressuring her to settle down with a man while her boss is sexually harassing her at work and even at her home. At one point early on in Love on a Leash, Jana's boss breaks into her house to profess his attraction to her, a terrifying scenario only ended because Prince appears to chase him (the editing makes it unclear what really happens). Once this boss leaves, Jana understandably responds to this turn of events by sobbing uncontrollably on her couch...all while Prince, through voice-over sings a happy song of victory praising his numerous great qualities.

Those expecting a disposable and trite family movie like fellow super-indie movie about people turning into dogs A Bulldog for Christmas will be shocked by this kind of scene that attempts to juxtapose a case of sexual assault with wacky dog hijinks. Love on a Leash constantly breaches serious material a bit out of the grasp of a movie where a man turns into a doggo on a nightly basis, even the eventual romance between Prince and Jana is treated with a level of melodramatic seriousness that one wouldn't expect from this production. It's a tonal clash that doesn't work at all, especially since the seriousness constantly gets undercut by both the dog antics and the performances of all of the actors who are delivering hammy turns that makes the acting of a villain in an Air Buddies movie look subtle by comparison.

But such a clash does make for a fascinating trainwreck to watch, especially when paired up with odd filmmaking choices like the constant pointless dutch angles, recurring pieces of strange blocking that ensures barely any of the characters are seen in a single frame or the decision to paint everything in Jana's house in a bright shade of green. Also, why does Prince act like a completely different organism when he's in the dog body? As a human, he looks like off-brand Bo Burnham and acts like Hayden Christensen in the Star Wars prequels, but as a dog, he's always snarking and singing. There is no answer to that question or any of the countless other queries you'll have while watching Love on a Leash, a frequently incoherent story that truly goes to the dogs in an unintentionally amusing fashion.