Artist in Person

(Tierische Liebe). Seidl's most notorious film, Animal Love takes its lurid premise-people who love their pets far, far too much-and delivers one of the most graphic examples of human loneliness and desperation ever captured on celluloid, prompting even Werner Herzog to proclaim, "I have never looked so directly into hell in the cinema." Two retirees train their dog, a brutal ex–convict hooks up with an ex–junkie and her pet ferret, two homeless youths panhandle with pets, an actress falls in love with her husky: these are some of the tales of Animal Love, played out in tableaux of peeling wallpaper, dim lighting, and muddied floors, like Bosch paintings gaping through the seams of Viennese life. Relentless, Seidl's gaze sweeps into the darkest corners, refusing to turn from the residue of decay. Amidst lives untouched by sunlight, however, there lingers a reality unconcerned with decoration or artifice, where the human search for affection and love is captured by Seidl-and expressed by his protagonists-with a truly moving, if discomfiting explicitness.