Ingmar (12) is a problematic boy who either fights with his older brother Erik or causes mischief at home, stressing his sick single mother. To help her relax, the relatives send Erik to one part of the family for the summer, while Ingmar ends up living with his uncle Gunnar. Ingmar joins the association football and boxing club, where he meets the tomboyish girl Saga, who likes him. When his mother dies, Ingmar stays permanently with Gunnar, but he also hosts a Greek couple, so Gunnar's his wife arranges that Ingmar stays living with the old Mrs. Arvidsson. During a boxing match, Ingmar barks like a dog, so Saga tells him his dog, which he left behind at his mother's home, is dead. Ingmar runs away and hides inside a summer house, as the double loss takes a toll on him, and Gunnar comforts him.
"My Life as a Dog" is an overrated coming-of-age film, but still has merits in depicting how sometimes people make stupid mistakes in childhood, which they regret later in life. The main stumbling point is that the protagonist, the 12-year old Ingmar, is insufferably annoying in the first half of the story, which makes the task of enjoying the movie difficult, since, through his mischief and peculiar behavior, he acts as Dennis the Menace with autism: for instance, Ingmar accepts to put his penis inside a glass bottle, on the behest of his older brother Erik, but when it gets stuck, his mother has to break the bottle by smashing it on the wall; Ingmar randomly splashes his face with a glass full of milk during breakfast, and when his mother wants to wipe the table, she finds his bedsheets hidden inside the kitchen cupboard, wet from his urine, but she still uses it to wipe the table; while arguing with Erik who holds a gun at their dog, Ingmar spills a bowl of batter on the floor, the mom chases them both, and then they hold the door of her bedroom so that she cannot open them to get to them. Considering that their mother suffers from some sort of terminal pulmonary disease, and this stresses her out even more, this is hard to watch. The second half of the film thus becomes Ingmar's self-realization of his missed opportunities and errors, though he is still too passive to undergo any kind of redemption ark. The mother's death is handled remarkably subtle and unemotional, with Ingmar only being invited by a relative to talk to him in private, but without showing any melodrama. Yet, in the end, as Ingmar remembers both his late mother and dog, he realizes the only joint memory he will have of her will be how he caused her anguish and misery, as he was not mature enough to improve in time, which causes his emotional collapse in a very touching ending. A small standout is Melinda Kinnaman as Ingmar's tomboyish semi-girlfriend Saga, though it is weird as she is around 13 years old, but still shows him his bare chest in a controversial scene. The director Lasse Hallstrom injects the film with a lot of humor to ease the tragic subject, yet he is rather conventional, except in a few more imaginative scenes (Ingmar runs on the football field to kick the ball, but before he does he is shoved away by another boy who kicks it instead).
Grade:++
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