My Dog Tulip

My Dog Tulip

Directed by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger

At Film Forum

Runtime: 83 min.

The husband and wife animated team Paul and Sandra Fierlinger work in an endangered classical tradition that is uncannily apt for My Dog Tulip, an adaptation of the 1956 memoir by British writer J.R. Ackerley. The Fierlinger’s are not afraid to bring back the hand-fashioned artistry of animated drawing and its original-frame photographic process. (Paul boasts 116, 640 frames in the film’s press kit.) The effect is automatically nostalgic, but its purpose is personal. Pixar has scrubbed animation clean of its former human element—resulting in the  antiseptic cultural nightmare of Toy Story 3. My Dog Tulip restores human feeling to animation, a post-Pixar miracle.

Ackerley’s misadventures with his obstinate yet loving German Shepherd sounds precious yet it is not twee—there is grit in its charm. It becomes a story of matching opposite personalities and the sympathy that two souls exchange. The Fierlingers' work exhibits a range of illustration options—from seemingly “unfinished” sketches (depicting imaginary asides) to realistic representations drawn in various, spare styles. Their methods don’t coddle for children like so many commercial animated features, despite the sweet irony of My Dog Tulip frequently resembling the sketch-pad quality that Disney experimented with for the original 101 Dalmations. 

Pixar and contemporary digital effects now tyrannize animation to the point that the Fierlingers’ adherence to the imagination becomes a demonstration of artistic freedom. One important result is the drawing of Tulip herself: within a few lines the Fierlingers dare a pastel-like smudge for a startlingly tactile, life-like effect. This makes My Dog Tulip almost literally touching. It should, ideally, be seen on a double bill with the 1988 film of Ackerley’s We Think the World of You where Alan Bates memorably fleshed-out a middle-aged gay man’s relationship with his pet dog. He confirmed the emotional richness of a life outside pre-Stonewall social conventions. Not even the finest animation can equal how Bates, fur-collared like his best friend, turned affection into revelation.