‘DOG’ HONORS BUKOWSKI SPIRIT

Belgian film maker Dominique Deruddere’s “Love Is a Dog From Hell” ( at the Beverly Center Cineplex) honors the spirit rather than the letter of legendary Los Angeles writer Charles Bukowski--and is all the better for having done so.

Several years ago, Italy’s esteemed dark comedian of the cinema, Marco Ferreri, whose English is all but nonexistent, attempted an English-language film drawn from some of Bukowski’s “Tales of Ordinary Madness,” in which the film maker incorporated great swaths of Bukowski’s poetic lowlife dialogue. The result was artificial and pretentious, atypical of Ferreri and Bukowski. But for Deruddere, in a feature debut as effective as it is distinctive, Bukowski is but a point of departure, and Deruddere wisely sticks to his native tongue.

(The terrific “Barfly,” which premiered at the Telluride, Colo., film festival this month is truest to Bukowski, but even it was made by a foreign film maker, France’s Barbet Schroder, albeit by one who knows Bukowski and his territory very well, having lived and worked in Los Angeles over a period of years.)

“Love Is a Dog From Hell” unfolds as three succinct, well-told, well-acted and beautifully photographed vignettes in the life of Harry Vos at age 12 (in 1955), 19 and 33. The first is a funny tale of a small-town boy (Geert Hunaerts, who plays the adolescent Harry), who learns the facts of life from Stan (Michael Pas), who’s several years older and has a crazy scheme involving a schoolmate’s sultry mother (Carmela Locantorc), which has uproarious results. The 12-year-old Harry is a dreamy kid whose notions of romance come from lush fairy-tale movies and who possesses a sensitivity at odds with his earthy environment.

Hunaerts’ Harry is a handsome boy, which makes Harry’s appearance as a high school senior all the more shocking. Harry--now played by Josse De Pauw--would not be good-looking in the best of circumstances but he is now afflicted with the worst case of acne imaginable. He is so disfigured that he might as well be the Elephant Man as far as his classmates are concerned--and who can be crueler than high school kids? This vignette turns upon the brave ingenuity that Harry exhibits in attempting to win a dance with the prettiest girl at the senior prom.

By the end of Part 2, Harry has discovered the solace of the bottle, and in Part 3 he has become a scraggly-haired bum. (It’s a relief to discover that the totally convincing acne was only makeup, but how could Harry have escaped without any scarring? Certainly, the ravaged-looking Bukowski, to whom Harry is becoming something of an alter ego, didn’t.) This final chapter is directly inspired by Bukowski’s “The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, California.” In an alcoholic haze Harry runs into an old pal (Amid Chakir), and they pull off a drunken prank in stealing a corpse, which proves to be that of a beautiful young woman. Boozy humor gives way to a daring, unexpected tenderness. Deruddere adds his own romantic ending to the tale, which caps his film’s increasingly downbeat and pessimistic tone.

“Love Is a Dog From Hell” (Times-rated: Mature for adult themes and situations) is a sweetly sad fable that seems far more Deruddere than Bukowski--which is fine because it succeeds on its own wisely modest and intimate terms.