Love on a Leash (2011)

Director: Fen Tian

Screenplay: Fen Tian

Cast: Jana Camp as Jana; Aneese Khamo as Prince; Gloria Winship Ayon as the Mother; Shane Ayon as the Store Owner; Michaelina Lee as the Friend

[Major Spoilers Throughout]

The cover of this straight-to-DVD film looks ridiculous - a blonde woman hastily put together with a Labrador in a suit, holding a leash in its mouth and extending a paw out. For whatever reason, it's developed a little cult specifically on the film website Letterboxd, the reason why I even learnt of this film in the first place. It's a dumbfounding project, and as the 2010s leaves us it is littered with these oddities, this up there alongside The Evil Within (2017) and Flexing with Monty (2010) in the level of strangeness, but when one was a Getty using his millions to make a film, the other an unfinished psychodrama of perversity and Catholic guilt, Love on a Leash is a very low budget and haphazardly made interpretation of the Princess and the Frog with a dog.

The first question to ask is who director -writer Fen Tian is. There's not a lot on Tian barring the fact her IMDB talks of her having one acting role, a tiny one, in The Joy Luck Club (1993) and that she made one other film beyond her debut, Forbidden Kiss (2012).  The production company Fenix Pictures who made the film is better known for many films of Ulli Lommel, the former Rainer Werner Fassbinder collaborator who became a director but eventually made a lot of straight to DVD horror this is not highly regarded. There's also a suspicion, beyond the many issues and aspects of Love on a Leash to deal with, that there's a cultural barrier at hand with this Chinese-American production. Tales with this idea, of a man who is turned into a dog before the film and can only change if he finds love, do exist in the West, but this type of modern day folklore tale is not commonly adapted in Hollywood films anymore barring a joke, let alone this elaborate and eventually getting into doomed love. A lot of this is just admittedly that, even if the tone found in Chinese cinema can be incredibly jarring in tone shifts for outsiders not used to it, this film is just strange without any real logical reason.

Love on a Leash is also quite a film of tragedy, belying its silly looking DVD cover. Before we even get into that however, you have a roughly put together work, and that's an understatement. A lot of Love on a Leash is a Frankenstein composite of scenes edited together with many improvised scenes surrounding a surprisingly well trained Labrador. It's a mess to be honest, probably one of the most technically disorganised I have seen even from someone who watches many low budget productions struggling against adversity.

There's also the dreadful decision to give the dog the voice, only heard by the viewer, of a chauvinistic arsehole who is meant to be funny. Out of everything in Love on a Leash, I adapted to how technically bad the film eventually but that creative decision to have a guy recording jokes at inappropriate moments is egregious, especially as he is a sexist pig for most of the film. Even when the character softens, and even becomes sympathetic as he learns humility onscreen, the version voiced in the other scenes is only acceptable when he abruptly starts to sing constantly.

Mostly this is egregious because, contrary to the look of the film, Love on a Leash is a depressing film whose tonal films are fascinating, ninety minutes an emotional rollercoaster between the presentation and then the various aspects of the film dramatically. It initially starts as the secondary tale of Jana (Jana Camp), a meek and henpecked young woman, on an incredibly peculiar start, where two tangents with two possible suitors involves two potential separate films, one effectively Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet (1993), when her Chinese co-worker is a gay man wanting a fake marriage to hide his real self from his family, the other a perplexing tale in itself of adoptive families of matriarchal women against forced sterilisation and creepy Oedipal restrictions. That the film discards both, in favour of a plot that's just as perversely compelling, is a sign of this being something very different.

For starters, Jana's story gets dark, even if an attempted suicide by pills is undercut by the talking dog making jokes before and after whilst blundering about. The tone is a huge aspect with the film you need to adapt to even after you accept it's been cobbled together in post production to an extreme, with sound cutting around harshly or nonexistent for added dissonant effect. This is where you have broad stereotypes, like a broad foreign female neighbour trying to get the female lead to be hitched for her mother's sake, only to get bleak. Jana losing her friend, losing contact with her family, only because in spite of eventually a romance where the dog is finally able to turn into a stud Prince Charming, he can only become human at night because he wasn't sincere enough.

All of this is belied by the chaotic tonal shifts. It gets kinky - can a woman love a man who becomes man's best friend in the day, putting on a dog collar on him for sexy photos at some point never explained - and played for slapstick, such as the diner with her boss that goes amiss with her inexplicably falling into the swimming pool and needing canine rescue. Its chaotic keeping up with the film, which unlike many in this however never falls into a slump of predictable storytelling, which is the aspect which redeems this mess in many ways; so much is roughly put together, shots likely stolen and abruptly put together, even David Bowie's China Girl making an audio appearance with a sense it wasn't even paid for. There's always something in terms of a twist or an emotionally shocking plot point that is going to frustrate some viewers, be it all the depressing material where lead actress Jana Camp is continually crying or ridiculous, but is compelling nonetheless.

Production wise, many of the film feels like it was shot on a store bought camera with the most distinct trademark being the prominence of green in production design in Jana's apartment and some low budget computer effects, mainly due to the mysterious magical figure behind the dog's situation found at a duck pond in the park. There's an unexpected rawness to the film, particularly with the locations used in the film that in some cases do deserve credit for being distinct, particularly as there are clear excuses to show Chinese American culture which I am all in favour for, such as a gallery exhibition where memorably the dog is not allowed in to his annoyance.

The other thing Love on a Leash does that few films in this possible possess is to stick to its ambitions. "Bad" cinema, when viewed ironically or not, can have really generic plots, many ultimately bad in the truest sense as they have no convictions for taking risks. Love on a Leash is a rare exception that Fen Tian is playing for a bitter sweet tragedy, where a true love is stuck with a friction that cuts Jana off from her friends and family, with the dog even being run over and dying. I'd never expect a film like this, which is an utter mess, to suddenly warm the heartstrings when, in old age makeup, Jana will meet her true love again in the conclusion. There's clearly a story type here more in common with Asian cinema of the normalcy of the supernatural, which actually has to be applauded for its bravado. That's ultimately, somehow, why I admire Love on a Leash as one of the few films that can overcome such crippling technical flaws, and misguided creative decisions such as bad talking dogs making jokes, to be something honestly rewarding to sit through.

Abstract Spectrum: Bizarre/Psychotronic/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium