How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
J. R. Ackerley's "My Dog Tulip" is a book about the simplest and most complex thing in the world: a man's relationship with his dog. For 16 years, Ackerley, a reclusive gay writer, lived alone with a stubborn and temperamental German shepherd. What he found — and what he recounts with an incredible amount of thoughtfulness and wit — is that she became his life and he became hers.
Now we have an animated film adaptation from husband and wife Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, two people who seem to love the book almost as much as Ackerley loved the dog. The animation is entirely hand-drawn, which means the lines are wavy (think "Dr. Katz"), and the sketches — some of which are in pencil on notebook paper — can be crude. It ain't Pixar, but that's not a bad thing: The slapdash, all-over-the-place visuals emanate pure, unencumbered creativity, as if each frame were scribbled down after a particularly productive shower.
It's essentially an illustrated audiobook. Christopher Plummer plays the memoirist, narrating a condensed version of the text in a raspy, suitably educated voice, while the images swirl and shapeshift underneath. There are other characters, such as a vet played by Isabella Rossellini who, in a memorable scene, pinpoints the secret to Tulip's difficult demeanor. But for the most part, the film keeps you in the wonderfully obsessed head of its narrator.
What the film makes you see wholly anew is that "Tulip" is a story about the imagination — what or whom Ackerley imagines his dog to be, which she can neither confirm nor deny herself. In one of his elaborate thought bubbles, which consume the frame from time to time, Tulip is wearing a smart black dress and some thick aviators, walking on two legs as if she owns the sidewalk. Reading the book, I would never have visualized her as Anna Wintour with a master. Yet there she is, perfectly composed.
And "Tulip" is also, of course, a story about the real — the real shit that happens, literally, when you make yourself responsible for an animal's well-being. The film (it's unrated) is advertised as being for people with an adult sensibility, which essentially means kids wouldn't be able to stop giggling at all the times when Ackerley mentions the dog's vagina. He's a lot more invested in his dog's excretive and reproductive habits than your average dog owner, often in an eyebrow-raising way. But perhaps the most honest and perceptive discovery in his entire memoir is when he figures out that Tulip's "liquids and solids" are words in a language he doesn't quite speak. The film has no way to express that any better (it doesn't make emoticons out of her poop or anything), but it knows not to clean up the mess or turn it into a scatological joke when it is truly anything but.
I guess it's probably not a movie to recommend to cat lovers, people with dander allergies or the woman who threw all those puppies into the river on YouTube. It's also not, I repeat, for kids. But I think the appeal of its wisdom — its sensitive inquiry — is borderline universal, whether you've owned a dog, felt concern for a dog or simply stepped in dog shit.
"My Dog Tulip" is playing until Sept. 14 at Film Forum.
