’Dog On Trial' director-star Laetitia Dosch on turning her stage play into a Cannes film

A film about a dog actually started with a play about a horse. Actress and playwright Laetitia Dosch was on stage opposite a horse in her play Hate when she caught the eye of Swiss producer Lionel Baier.

“Lionel said, ‘If you can do a theatre show with a horse, you can direct a film,’” recalls Dosch, best known for roles on screen in Léonor Serraille’s Jeune Femme and Justine Triet’s Age Of Panic, among others. “I believed him, but now I don’t know why because it’s so different. It’s not the same at all!”

Dosch’s feature directing debut, Dog On Trial (Le Procès Du Chien), now premieres in Un Certain Regard on May 19. The jumping-off point for the screenplay, which she co-wrote with Anne-­Sophie Bailly, was a real-life case about a dog owner put on trial for his canine’s unruly behaviour. Local citizens were outraged the dog was being treated as a piece of property that could be discarded, rather than its own being.

In Dosch’s spin on the story, the dog himself goes on trial, resulting in a lively courtroom comedy that also raises serious questions about animal rights and a woman’s place in society.

Dosch took on the role of the dog’s defender, feisty feminist lawyer Avril — and admits she never seriously entertained the idea of casting another actress. “Maybe that’s not very nice,” she says with a laugh. “[But] it’s like Fleabag — can you imagine anyone other than Phoebe Waller-Bridge playing her? I knew inside this character’s head, the way she sees the world.”

Expectations of society

Dosch, who splits her time between France and Switzerland, draws parallels between the way humankind tamed the wolf into a more “docile and sweet” companion, to how society expects women to behave.

“I feel like a woman has to behave a certain way that society wants to see, and that’s not at all in my nature,” she explains. “That’s what is happening with this dog — he bites because he protects his food, like a wolf would do. That question of being accepted, what’s acceptable, is important to me.”

Dosch also embraced the tonal shifts in the story, including an ending that some audiences might not see coming. “The film can be funny then horrible and then funny again,” she says. “It’s unbalanced and all the better for it.”

The film’s canine lead Cosmos will surely be a contender for this year’s coveted Palme Dog, which last year went to Anatomy Of A Fall’s Messi who made it all the way to the Oscar ceremony.

Dosch scouted dozens of typical showbiz canines in France before hearing of a family that trains the animals with rewards rather than punishment. There, she discovered Kodi, a rescue dog with the exact look she wanted.

“He had been a wild dog and there was so much story in his face,” notes Dosch, who says Kodi was treated like a member of the family on set and off. “He was so, so charming and vulnerable and full of love.

“At first we had lots of tricks in the script, and he can do them, but in the editing I cut them,” she adds. “It’s not about what this dog can do, it’s about the feelings he was showing us. What’s most beautiful about Kodi is the way he looks at people.”

Dosch is happy Kodi will soon hit 10 years old and retire from acting before enjoying some years of downtime. Nor does she take it for granted that it is a very rare comedy selected for Cannes. Ahead of Dog On Trial’s world premiere (mk2 Films handles international sales), Dosch has even had anxious nightmares about being in Théatre Debussy watching the film unspool and not a single person in the audience laughs.

“What is beautiful in Cannes is there are a lot of different films coming from very different worlds, very different cultures,” she says. “You might have a film of someone dying for three hours, but then we can have our comedy.”

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