My Dog Tulip - MIFF 2010
Film
Rob Jan
My Dog Tulip is an American independent animated feature directed and animated by Paul Fierlinger and his wife Sandra. The director has created several canine based works before (Still Life With Animated Dogs) and his affinity for the subject matter clearly wags the tail of this charming bow-wowgraphy based on the 1956 novel by British author J.R. Ackerley.
Ackerley’s Alsatian bitch, was actually named Queenie, in the original story, but the writer’s editors insisted it be changed to Tulip, to avoid unfortunate jokes riffing on Ackerley’s sexuality, who was openly gay. A rose by any other name, Tulip proves a problem pet, the legacy of her early life being spent largely confined to a small backyard by inattentive owners who didn’t socialise her with outside contact or walks. Ackerley, a curmudgeon himself, rapidly finds his newly acquired housemate dominating his life, amusingly defining any and all human relationships against a background of the less adorable habits of dogs that you definitely won’t see in a Disney animation.
This makes for a refreshingly adult cartoon, with, for a change, no concessions to the juvenile it’s full of insights into the grumblingly mundane ways of the pet owning bitch and moderately famous....
The drawings are at once both fussy and fanciful, contrasting the dog’s unfettered romping with her notional master’s rumpled stolidity. The animation occasionally reverts to naughty pencil sketches recorded in a journal that make me wonder what Tulip’s account of her master’s life would be like.
Amiable but first rate voice acting by notables like Christopher Plummer, Lyn Redgrave and Isabella Rossellini round out what’s a very engaging feature that offers particular pleasures of affirmation to those who are besotted with pets and those who are not, so that both factions can point at the screen and say, "See! That's WHY!!"
Rob Jan presents Zero G Monday afternoons 1-2pm
