Barking Dogs Never Bite review – Bong Joon-ho’s debut is a freaky delight

Dog lovers beware! Bong Joon-ho’s barmy, darkly comic debut is released in the UK for the first time, loosely based on 19th-century children’s novel “A Dog of Flanders” – though it must be said that this now twenty-year-old film has Bong's unmistakable paws all over it. As the filmmaker's first exploration of societal ills, Barking Dogs Never Bite also bears comparison to his Oscar-winning Parasite, a look into yet more interconnected lives crushed under the weight of class-based disillusion and disappointment.

Lee Sung-jae is Yun-ju, a nebbish University lecturer who experiences a kind of mental breakdown after realising his career progression relies on paying an extraordinary bribe to a superior. To make matters worse, he lives in a huge, faceless apartment block with his pregnant girlfriend, where the two fester in a loveless relationship. And then there’s that bloody dog, constantly barking in the peripherals, a relentless reminder of Yun-ju's failure to fly. Could the dog be mocking him, even? Yun-ju certainly thinks so. Soon he's obsessed with putting the guilty pup out of its misery – a decision that leads him into a sort-of relationship with a friendly apartment worker, played with understated charisma by Bae Doona, not to mention a creepy maintenance man with a taste (yes, a taste) for dog flesh. Oh, and he gets entangled with a lot more dogs, too.

There is an ensemble quality here, as we move between characters and take pleasure in spotting the crossovers and connections: as they gossip and dream of better lives, making excuses and blaming others for their problems, separated by the same, cardboard walls, it becomes apparent that these stories will eventually collide. How is all part of the fun. “I’m going to the dogs,” Yun-ju sighs at one point. Bong's film seems to wonder whether he's brought it all upon himself or the pressures of Korean society are to blame.

Elsewhere, Bong delights in spinning his story off on unrelated tangents, packing his film with amusing digressions, surreal touches, and red herrings. Maybe, in the end, it doesn’t quite land with the same satisfying punch of his later masterpieces, though it is absolutely evocative of his genre-defying style, ping-ponging between moments of sudden violence and comic set-pieces, all held together by inventive, gliding camerawork.

Barking Dogs overstays its welcome slightly and suffers, occasionally, from issues with pacing. But what a delight it is to witness the confidence and precision of this debut, proof that Bong's talent for broaching social issues in unexpected and delirious ways was there right from the start.

Barking Dogs Never Bite is now streaming on Curzon Home Cinema.