People have always recommended Dogs In Space (1986) to me and I know for many people it means a lot to them, representing a time and place, the post-punk sub-culture of Melbourne in the late 1970s. It’s also a key cult text in Australian cinema, director Richard Lowenstein bringing one of the biggest rock stars at the time, Michael Hutchence into a movie that was anything but audience friendly (and possibly his pop star fame might have seemed antithetical to the music scene it was depicting). There’s a lot that you can say about Dogs In Space, but I don’t really know the history or the scene it represents that well. What I did appreciate was how it drops viewers into a chaotic river, the ramshackle sharehouse where the title band rehearses, and doesn’t care to orientate you in any traditional way. Much like Fellini or Altman, the film feels like a non-stop party, multiple characters showing up, dialogue overlapped and shouted, heavy music and drugs always on the go. It just feels so stylistically different to a lot of Australian movies at that time and even now. That, and the double-echo of what it is depicting, it’s the late-70s but it’s also the mid-80s at the time of production, and the period depiction is not broad with its fashion and song cues (like an Australian TV miniseries of the time period would be, Molly etc). Some of it still seems like what you’d see happening in the here and now, depending on the house and the bands orbiting around it. Overall, I liked the movie, there were so many memorable moments or compelling sequences. Hutchence is good as the self-involved singer, and Saskia Post’s performance stole the movie for me – just something so charismatic and alive in her characterisation. Soundtrack features music by Iggy Pop, Primitive Calculators, The Birthday Party and Marie Hoy. Streaming on Amazon Prime and SBS On Demand. Recommended.
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