The dogs of "Mon Oncle"

The Jacques Tati film "Mon Oncle" is such a wonderful, well-known and deservedly beloved classic that I don't think I've ever bothered to write about it - it's so funny, visually clever and delightful. It's one of my favorite movies - I've seen it so many times and I think it's actually perfect. It was on again, thank you Criterion, and I started telling my only faithful movie-watching companions, my dogs, about how much they would love this movie if they could pay any attention to 2-D. So i just wanted to say, special shoutout to les chiens de Mon Oncle. They run wild through the movie, going wherever they please, peeing on everything and eating garbage, snarling at fish at the market, stealing sausages. It's basically a dog paradise and it makes tons of sense in the context of the movie contrasting wild and free nature with modern constraint. The dogs start and end the movie and they're perfect bookends. There's a fabulous footnote to their presence - Tati got all the dogs from a local pound, and got so attached to them that he wanted them to have a great post-movie life, so he advertised them as movie star dogs so they all got excellent homes.

The dachshund with the cute little coat (which he manages to shed) stops by home, the center of much of the action, with his friends.

If you guys only knew what you were missing.