Austrian enfant terrible Ulrich Seidl (okay, he's 50) has earned a reputation for creating beautifully photographed documentaries that illustrate the isolation and despair of suburbia, so it's no surprise that Dog Days, his first fictional film, combines a cinéma vérité style with murky composition and framing while maintaining his depiction of middle-class banality.  Does it work?  Days was a nominee for Discovery of the Year at the European Film Awards, won a Special Grand Jury Prize in Venice, and landed Seidl in the Director's Spotlight program in Toronto (where recent honorees have included Benoit Jacquot, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Pedro Almódovar).

Thanks to films like Happiness, Blue Velvet and American Beauty, most of us already know that the 'burbs are merely a breeding ground for all things evil.  But while Messrs. Solondz, Lynch and Mendes picked the festering scab of the land of manicured lawns and two-car garages in a glossy, well-lit manner, Seidl's Days is a gritty mess more akin to Gummo, The Blair Witch Project or the latest Dogme offering than anything playing in mainstream theatres, where films don't often end with a character singing the Austrian national anthem with a lit candle shoved up his ass (the lyrics – "a nation blessed by its sense of beauty" – might induce giggling).

Days is set in Vienna over the two hottest days of the year (an homage to Do the Right Thing?).  Here are some of the characters you'll meet (and, in some cases, the people from which you'll want to immediately flee):

- A divorced couple (Claudia Martini and Victor Rathbone), still grieving over the death of their only child, who remain living in the same house for the sole purpose of pissing each other off.  She brings dates over, while he angrily bounces a tennis ball to drown out the pain.

- A perky exotic dancer (Franziska Weiss) and her insanely jealous boyfriend (René Wanko), who drags her clients off and beats them when they stare at her too long.  That kind of thing is hell on the repeat business upon which strippers so desperately rely.

- A morbidly obese man (Erich Finsches) who has big plans for his 50th wedding anniversary, even though his wife has been dead for years.  His housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) will serve as a stand-in, whether she likes it or not (and she does!).

- A mentally challenged woman (Maria Hofstätter) who hangs out in a supermarket parking lot, hitches rides with complete strangers and then irritates them with incredibly intrusive questions and top ten lists about Viennese pop culture.  Did I mention her voice is slightly more grating than Janice's on Friends?

- A schoolteacher (Christine Jirku) who used to be a beauty queen but now finds herself dating a disgusting, abusive man (Victor Hennemann - a famous Austrian pornographer) who surprises her by bringing home another man (Georg Friedrich) to help mistreat her.  "With us, anything goes," he says, right before his sidekick throws up on her carpet.  You get the idea the line might apply to Seidl's film, as well.

Seidl's script contained no dialogue, which might have made filming even more of a challenge, considering Days is populated mostly by non-actors (it took three and a half years to complete, from pre-production to final cut). What the script did include, though, was a whole lot of nudity.  And these actors aren't the fit-and-trim types we're used to seeing on the screen, either (for the most part, each could offer serious competition in a bratwurst-eating contest).  Days definitely isn't for everyone, as evidenced by numerous walkouts at festival screenings, but those of you who stick it out might really dig it.  At minimum, it will make you want to shower, and in my book, that's the sign of a film that works.

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