Stray Dogs (2013 film)
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Tsai Ming-liang |
| Produced by | Vincent Wang |
| Written by | Peng Fei Tsai Ming-liang Tung Cheng Yu |
| Starring | Lee Kang-sheng |
| Cinematography | Liao Pen-jung Lu Ching-hsin Shong Woon-chong |
| Edited by | Lei Chen-ching |
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Release date
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Running time
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138 minutes |
| Country | Taiwan |
| Language | Mandarin |
Stray Dogs (Chinese: ˈ郊遊, French: Les Chiens errants) is a 2013 Taiwanese-French drama film. The Chinese title of the film is Jiaoyou, which means "Excursion." It was written and directed by Tsai Ming-liang and starred Lee Kang-sheng.
A man and his two young children, a boy and a girl, are homeless in Taipei. During the day, the father has a job holding up a sign advertising real estate along a busy thoroughfare. The children spend their time wandering around stores and the landscape, which appears to be mostly depopulated. The family meets at night to wash in public bathrooms and sleep in abandoned buildings. Only occasional casual conversations are overheard. Long wordless sequences pass of the man performing daily activities: eating, drinking, sleeping, smoking, urinating, defecating, sometimes weeping. Obviously depressed, he violently assaults, then eats, an anthropomorphic cabbage that his daughter has kept as a toy. A woman, the kids' mother or at least a mother-like figure, stealthily observes the family. She "rescues" them from the rainstorm-drenched punt where the father has stowed them, and later joins the family in an abandoned building assuming her maternal role.
Stray Dogs was the 10th feature film directed by Tsai. The film was written by Tsai, Peng Fei, and Tung Cheng Yu, and it was produced by Vincent Wang. It starred Tsai's regular lead actor, Lee Kang-sheng, as the father. The two siblings in the film were played by actual siblings, who are Lee's nephew and niece and Tsai's godchildren.
Stray Dogs is similar to Tsai's previous films in some ways. According to J. Hoberman of The New York Times, "Like other films by Mr. Tsai, it has a postapocalyptic feel. Torrential rain is virtually constant, and Taipei feels depopulated — a place where events, mostly concerning food and shelter, may be staged in situ."
Tony Rayns of Film Comment wrote that, unlike Tsai's previous films, Stray Dogs "does away almost completely with continuity editing. Most of its scenes are single shots, and there's no causal link between one and the next. Some shots are so realist that they could have been taken with a hidden camera. Others are so stylized that they might well represent dreams.
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