From Bernardo BERTOLUCCI’s Last Tango in Paris to JANG Sunwu’s Lies, there are movies that leave a deep scar on the audience’s mind, dealing with perverse desires. The Finnish film Dogs Don’t Wear Pants, which was introduced during this year′s Cannes Film Festival, is also listed in the genealogy. How do humans become obsessed with a behavior called abnormalities? The main character of Dogs Don’t Wear Pants has a reason to be widely understood.
A man who lost his wife in a drowning accident meets the pleasures of masochism at an SM club he accidentally finds. He meets a woman at the club who ironically arouses sexual excitement by giving him pain. He gradually takes physical pain and mental disgrace as a pleasure, and the degree gets stronger and stronger. The moment the woman strangled him to the brink of death, the man seems to find a way to shed his longing and guilt for his dead wife. Can we throw stones at the man’s morbid obsession? Instead of criticizing him, the movie comes up with an amazing way to cheer him up. (Nam Dong-chul)