Dog Days

Dog Days (Hundstage, 2001) is Ulrich Seidl's drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. The provocative Austrian director weaves several lives together across a faceless Vienna suburb baking in a midsummer heat wave.

The story splits into separate threads. A divorced couple still shares a house but barely speaks after losing a child. A lonely widower hires a strict housekeeper. A retired teacher endures the cruelty of a much younger lover. And a chattering hitchhiker drifts along the motorway, talking nonstop and driving every driver who picks her up to the edge. The heat melts the asphalt and the thin layer of decency over it, exposing the rage, lust and isolation underneath.

Seidl works right on the border between documentary and fiction: non-professional actors, static shots of cookie-cutter housing, scenes held uncomfortably long. The film took the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and earned a reputation as one of the harshest portraits of the comfortable middle class. Not for every viewer, and definitely not cozy — but it hits hard. Stream Dog Days (2001) online on iFILM.