I Cani abbaiano

Two neighbours glaring at each other survive amidst the ruins of a village devastated by the Aquila earthquake. Roberto sleeps in a car, Felice in what remains of his house. In the tragic Beckettian impossibility to communicate, their co-existence heightens the ghost-town impression that emanates from the shots of the post office, the fountain, the wood scaffolding supporting (to what end?) a few still-upright retaining walls. The structure of the film, which firstly preserves the mystery of the place, is a formal echo of the daze that the disaster perhaps created in the lives of both men. It also helps to preserve another mystery, one that has made them into the guardians of empty buildings, haunted only by their memories.

Charlotte Garson