Lawn Dogs

Lawn Dogs is a 1997 fantasy-drama film directed by John Duigan and starring Mischa Barton and Sam Rockwell. The film tells the story of a precocious young girl (Barton) from a gated community who befriends a landscape worker (Rockwell), and examines the societal repercussions of their friendship. Written by Naomi Wallace, the film was released by Rank Organisation, and was the company's last production.

Lawn Dogs
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJohn Duigan
Produced byDuncan Kenworthy
Written byNaomi Wallace
Starring
Music byTrevor Jones
CinematographyElliot Davis
Edited byHumphrey Dixon
Distributed byThe Rank Group (UK)
Strand Releasing (United States)
Release date
  • November 21, 1997 (1997-11-21) (UK)
  • May 15, 1998 (1998-05-15) (US)
Running time
101 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$8,000,000 (Estimated)
Box office$106,404

The film uses the folktale of Baba Yaga as a prominent plot device. Although filmed in Louisville and Danville, Kentucky in the United States, Lawn Dogs was a British film produced by Duncan Kenworthy. Lawn Dogs won numerous film awards at film festivals in Europe and met with generally positive reviews, with praise for the performances of Barton and Rockwell in particular.

Plot

The film focuses on 10-year-old Devon Stockard, a precocious and lonely young girl who has recently moved into a gated community called Camelot Gardens in the suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky with her parents, Morton and Clare. Recently having recovered from open heart surgery, Devon is encouraged by her parents to make friends, and she is pushed to sell cookies for a charity event for the summer. While selling cookies, Devon leaves the gated community against the instruction of her mother, and meets Trent Burns, a poor man who lives in a trailer in the woods, and who does landscaping work in Camelot Gardens. An imaginative child, Devon imagines her life to be like the fable of Baba Yaga, a fairytale which the film makes parallels to.

Devon, at first an annoyance to Trent, continues to come to his property and slowly befriends him; despite the innocence of their friendship, he insists that she keep it a secret because of their age difference. While working in Camelot Gardens, Trent begins having altercations with two young men who live there; Brett, who is having an affair with Devon's mother; and Sean, a man with closeted homosexual tendencies who flirts with Trent. During a family barbecue, Devon explores her father's car in their garage. She finds her father's handgun in the glove compartment of his SUV. Brett discovers her with the gun and attempts to molest Devon in the garage, but she escapes. She tells her parents about the incident, but when her parents respond by stressing over the social implications and how influential in the community Brett's father is, Devon changes the story to that Brett was only trying to tickle her. Clare begins to notice Devon's apparent friendship with Trent when he comes to do lawn work at their house, and becomes alarmed. Meanwhile, Brett and Sean terrorize Trent by pouring sugar in the fuel tank of his lawnmower and start a fight with him after they wrongfully believe he stole CDs from Sean's car.

Devon and Trent's friendship continues to grow, and the two go to visit Trent's mother and his father, a Korean War veteran who is dying of a lung disease. After leaving Trent's parents' house, Trent and Devon go for a drive in the country. While stopped in a field, Devon insists that since the two are "best friends", she can show him her surgical scar on her chest. She asks him to touch it to his reluctance, and then demands that he show her his abdominal scar which he sustained in a shooting. After showing each other their scars, the two see Sean's dog running through the field, having escaped. While trying to chase the dog down in the truck, they accidentally run him over. Trent kills the badly injured dog in spite of Devon's pleas for him not to, and she runs home in a panic over the incident.

Clare and Morton, concerned over Devon's frantic behavior, ask her what happened, but she refuses to provide details, only saying that Trent killed Sean's dog and mentions that she and Trent took turns showing each other their scars. Assuming that Trent molested her, Morton drives out to Trent's property with Devon, assisted by Sean and an ex-cop who is a security guard in Camelot Gardens. The three men confront Trent while Devon sits in the car.

Morton and Sean take turns beating Trent, and Morton accuses him of raping Devon. Morton attacks Trent with a piece of wood, beating him to the ground, and hands it to Sean; but before Sean can hit him, Devon exits her father's car with his handgun and shoots Sean in the abdomen. As Sean bleeds on the ground, Devon urges Trent to leave, and they say their goodbyes. Armed with her father's gun, Devon orders her dad to lift her up into a tree that she and Trent had decorated with ribbons, and she imagines a river and a forest rising up behind Trent as he drives away, protecting him as he escapes.

Cast

Reception

The film was well received by critics, based on 18 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 72% "Certified Fresh" overall approval rating.[1] Time Out praised Duigan in that he "maintains an atmosphere where dream is a short step from nightmare. Quirkily haunting."[2] Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised the casting of Barton and Rockwell "it also shows off a poised young actress and a leading man with charisma to burn." Maslin felt that the "pointedly whimsical film overworks the fairy-tale aspect of this friendship (between Devon and Trent)", she concluded that Duigan "does breathe life into a story that rails against conventional wisdom."[3] Empire praised Barton's "hypnotic central performance" and Wallace's "intelligent first screenplay". The review continued to note that "Duigan makes imaginative use of his material, heightening Devon's home-life horrors to semi-cartoonishness without stretching credibility, and the fantasy finale is a winner."[4]

A dissenting review came from Roger Ebert, who wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that Lawn Dogs is well-made but ultimately directionless and without meaning: "All of [the film's] events happen with the precision and vivid detail of a David Lynch movie, but I do not know why. It is easy to make a film about people who are pigs and people who are free spirits, but unless you show how or why they got that way, they're simply characters you've created."[5]

Awards and honours
YearAwardCategoryResult[6]
1997 Athens International Film Festival "Audience Award" - John Duigan Won
Montreal World Film Festival "Best Actor" - Sam Rockwell Won
"Grand Prix des Amériques" - John Duigan Nominated
Stockholm Film Festival "Audience Award" - John Duigan Won
Sitges Film Festival "Best Actor" - Sam Rockwell Won
"Best Screenplay" - Naomi Wallace Won
"Best Film" - John Duigan Nominated
1998 Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival "Golden Raven" - John Duigan Won
"Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Silver" - John Duigan Won
Fantafestival "Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Gold" - John Duigan Nominated

References
  1. Lawn Dogs Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 23 December 2011
  2. Lawn Dogs (1997) Time Out. 24 June 2006
  3. Lawn Dogs (1997) FILM REVIEW; What's Green, Newly Mown And Irksome? The New York Times. 15 May 1998
  4. Lawn Dogs Empire. 1 January 2000
  5. Ebert, Roger (15 May 1998). "Lawn Dogs". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 7 June 2020 – via RogerEbert.com.
  6. imdb.com awards list
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