The Big Dog review: a dominatrix film with bark and bite

There’s a grand tradition of films about savvy sex-working women making the most of men’s secret fantasies and coming out on top. They include the incomparable French legend Catherine Deneuve as Severin in Luis Buñuel’s 1967 classic Belle de Jour, Billie Piper in sassy TV show Secret Diary of a Call Girl and, of course, Julia Roberts in the much-loved American fantasy Pretty Woman.

Australia offers a new entrant in writer/director Dane McCusker’s xxx comedy The Big Dog, produced by Claudia Shepherd and lead producer Jess Murphy, in which it’s fair to say Julian Garner’s smarmy banker-type Richard is considerably less charming than Richard Gere. He and his wife Kelly (Felicity Price, Last King of the Cross) are getting ready to celebrate the graduation of their teenage son Sam (Michael Monk). Only he’s stuck in bed, depressed about the state of his life, and it’s clear there aren’t that many mates to invite. Their extended family’s AWOL, too.

Perhaps that has something to do with Richard’s attitude. He takes his wife’s loving support for granted and thinks nothing of demeaning his colleagues with alpha dog crap over the phone. That and he’s atrociously cranky about the next-door neighbour’s perma-barking pup. First rule of cinema: be nice to dogs or face the consequences.

Consequences crash the party big time. You see, Richard’s secretly in thrall to a financial-dominatrix (findom) Princess Page, played by Lambs of God actor Asha Boswarva, who controls his bank account, including considerable savings, and demands that he pay his dues via a series of video calls where the tables are turned, and she’s most definitely the boss. That includes making him wear Kelly’s underwear, building a shrine to his Princess that’s hidden in the currently abandoned downstairs refurb, and a ready-to-blackmail video addressed to all employees sitting in his outbox in which he drinks something other than coffee from a mug.

A mug’s game

All of which gets particularly curly when Richard’s inability to have a proper conversation with Sam about his son’s evident depression, despite Kelly imploring him to do so, results in deadbeat dad trying to pay his way out of his responsibilities, bribing the lad with a vintage car, as is Richard’s wont. The only problem is, failing psychology student Paige has drained all his accounts and this mug’s game is about to spill over into the family home spectacularly.

If The Big Dog’s scrappy farce isn’t quite as tight as it needs to be, McCusker’s debut shows plenty of promise through his handling of an enjoyably chaotic unravelling. For all its madcap escalation, the film gets at the nub of the psychological damage done by men who can’t own up to their emotions and the needs of those around them.

Home & Away alum Garner anchors the spiralling silliness with his sweat-inducing turn as a thoroughly unlikeable chap whose predicament we are nevertheless drawn into unwillingly.

The flaw in focusing so firmly on his misdemeaning deeds and desperate attempts to cover them up is that the women don’t get to shine as much as Deneuve, Piper and Roberts do, and while that may be the point, it’s still a bit of a shame. Price increasingly steps beyond the limitations of a thankless hard-done-by-partner role as Kelly begins to suspect her husband’s increasingly frustrating obfuscations are the result of a closeted gambling addiction, and really comes into her own when truth bombs are lobbed in the frantic final act.

In this home stretch, Boswarva gets more interesting stuff to do as Paige wrangles with the ethics of a gig that, while the rules are clear, leads to a family’s spectacular implosion. A bit more work fleshing out her life beyond the cash-grab screen would have bolstered The Big Dog.

Monk isn’t quite as convincing as Sam, either, but that’s mostly down to a subplot about his increasingly incel tendencies that, while en pointe in a story about selfish men and the women that have to put up with them, over-eggs the plot somewhat.

Marking McCusker as one to watch, this hangdog tale goes for broke and its bark has bite too. Might just need a bit more meat on the bones next time.

The Big Dog will have a limited theatrical run in Australian cinemas from 9 November.