Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2024)

CHILDHOOD AT THE END OF EMPIRE

Directed by Embeth Davidtz; Starring Embeth Davidtz, Lexi Venter, Zikhona Bali…

There’s a lot going on in little Bobo’s head. When she lights a candle at night, to find her way to the toilet, she knows to keep a sharp eye on the windows for terrorists. When her father departs for military service, she's aware that the dead eyes and tattoos of the guard he leaves behind are the marks of a Bush War veteran. And, she can tell, from overheard whispers, just how concerned all the adults are about the upcoming election.

For a kid growing up on a family farm in Rhodesia, this is everyday life. The vicious Bush War, fought between Ian Smith’s white minority government, and various guerrilla factions, has been going on for longer than eight-year-old Bobo (Lexi Venter) has been alive.

It's 1980, though, and everything is about to change. A year earlier, Smith had tried to end the war with a compromise return to black majority rule. When this failed to gain international recognition, he agreed to end the colony’s breakaway independence and return it to British control as “Rhodesia-Zimbabwe”. The British are currently preparing to hold an election in March that, under their supervision, will be free, fair, and open to all races. This will end white minority rule for good.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight takes place in the month or so before the election. A remarkable directorial debut from Embeth Davidtz (who also stars), the film captures colonial era Rhodesia with utter authenticity. The white members of the local club aren't the elegant colonial administrators of cliché, but a bunch of overweight, redneck farmers. And the scruffy family farm, scrubby landscape, military uniforms, vehicles, and so on all look like scenes out of period photos. (You can see the Rhodesians fought this war on the cheap.)

Shot in the outskirts of Johannesburg, Dogs manages to look terrific, and achieve this level of period detail, on a ludicrously tiny budget: $1.4 million. Or, roughly 1/255 the cost of the last Avengers outing. (Someone should be ashamed…)

The film isn't about Rhodesia, the war, or the upcoming election, though. With Bobo as our eyes, it's an exploration of the fears, uncertainties, enthusiasms, discoveries, and imaginative leaps that make early childhood such a unique stage of life (fortunately, she's an observant little moppet). The Bush War, rather than being the focus, is a dangerous background, showing how these universal experiences persist in even the most extreme circumstances.

(The best genre reflection often does something similar. Spy novels, for example, will use their espionage setting to heighten the stakes for stories that are really about personal loyalty and betrayal.)

And Bobo's circumstances are, indeed, extreme. Aside from the anxieties and literal terror of growing up in wartime, she's often neglected by her casually racist and alcoholic Mom and her casually racist and distant Dad (Rob van Vuuren). We frequently see her left waiting and bored, with a gang of other kids, while her parents get drunk at the club.

In consequence, she’s the scruffiest, most unkempt, and neglected looking thing you could ever hope to see. And yet, with the resilience of the young, she makes her own fun, playing with the farm’s dogs, or riding a trail bike around the farm (armed with a large BB gun). When Dad prepares for that spell of war service, she gets to feel useful, loading his rifle magazines with ammunition.

And, Bobo does receive a trickle of affection from the African housekeeper, Sarah (Zhikona Bali). Though she often scolds our wayward child, especially when Bobo attempts to “boss” the local black children, she also feeds her imagination with African fables and tales of legendary queens. Sarah even occasionally attempts to wash Bobo's filthy face. It's not much, but it's enough.

A film so rooted in character and everyday life wouldn’t work without a strong central performance and, fortunately, Lexi Venter delivers. Her wide eyes and precocious stare perfectly capturing the awareness and understanding of a child who sees and knows far more than her parents realize. In a preview of the adult to come, she has even begun to wrestle with issues of identity, knowing she isn't African, while not being English either.

In some ways, Dogs resembles Aftersun, a 2022 British film about a young daughter's holiday at a beach resort many years before with her troubled father. Both films have a realistic lack of “action”, the narrative drive coming from sharply observed moments of everyday life and sympathetic characters fighting to make their way through challenging circumstances.

But Aftersun’s story is weakened by a frustratingly cryptic framing device. The story is presented as a series of home movies being re-visited by the daughter as she attempts to understand her father in a way she couldn't manage as a child. The film would be better if this was either expanded — or cut entirely.

==== WARNING! MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD ====

Dogs, in contrast, sticks the landing, with the election providing a clear end to this phase of Bobo's short existence. When the radical Robert Mugabe wins, Dad promptly sells the farm and prepares to move the family to Zambia. As they set out in their ridiculously overloaded Land Rover, Bobo watches her old life disappear through the rear window. The sight of Sarah, left at the bus stop, triggers a flight of imagination. For once, we get to watch as she dreams of mythical African queens. It's a glimpse into a private world that will always be a haven for Bobo, no matter how barren the terrain of her childhood.

It's a great note on which to end the film. I just hope I haven't made Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight sound too much like medicine — something you watch because it's good for you. No! Watch this wonderfully human film because it's warm, funny, and full of unexpected incident. You can easily enjoy Dogs as an entertainment. Just don't be surprised if it sticks with you long after the closing scene.

THUMB UP

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Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is available to buy or rent in Canada on Apple TV, CosmoGo, and Amazon Video.