From the two old bastards with their new purchase of an increasingly erratic and vicious mutt, to the well-heeled woman who wines and dines her pedigree doggy date, from young homeless men begging with a bunny (a sure-fire sympathy getter), to the ugly couple fighting over who fractured the ferret; from the decidedly odd rituals of a pet funeral, to the even stranger rigours of sexual congress; humour turns to horror as the lineaments of sublimated, twisted desire draw you into a bizarre world where all fellow-feeling becomes suspect and an almost bestial evil seems to lurk behind every motive. Animal Love is ambushed by a cruelty that reigns on both sides of the camera With lacerating faux detachment director Ulrich Seidl lets his human sublets perform—and they often do like sideshow grotesques—walking a dangerously fine line in victimisation that is as enthralling as it is appalling

In this tawdry tale of the emotionally undernourished 'talking to the animals' becomes a dialogue with the damned rather than a date with Dr. Doolittle. (AH)