My Dog Tulip

A Dog Film That's Actually About a Dog

New Yorker Films

The British author J.R. Ackerley, voiced by Christopher Plummer in the movie My Dog Tulip, was well into his 50s when he acquired Tulip, and in this ebullient animal the distant Englishman encountered the ideal friend for whom he had been searching all his life.

New Yorker Films

A Tender Love Story Between Man and Dog

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Published: August 31, 2010

Those words, spoken in devotional tones by the film’s British narrator, distill with an elegant succinctness the bond between human and pet when the human is a lonely gay man who has all but given up on finding the longtime companion that the narrator calls his “ideal friend.”

That narrator, voiced by Christopher Plummer, is J. R. Ackerley (1896-1967), the British man of letters whose 1956 memoir, “My Dog Tulip,” chronicles his 15-year-relationship with Queenie, a German shepherd renamed Tulip for the book.

When Ackerley was “quite over 50,” and Tulip was 18 months old, he acquired her from a family that had kept her imprisoned indoors. The slender volume is a classic of animal literature for the refinement of its prose, its dry wit, and its close, unblinking attention to the subtleties of human-animal interaction.

Consider this observation, by the discreetly misanthropic Ackerley as he marvels at his new pet’s exuberance: “It seemed to me both touching and strange that she should find the world so wonderful.”

The film’s hand-drawn animation by the directors Paul and Sandra Fierlinger (they are married) and Mr. Plummer’s understated conversational voice combine to make “My Dog Tulip,” which opens on Wednesday at Film Forum in the South Village, one of the most sophisticated dog movies ever created.

The animation, consisting of 58,320 drawings, involves four graphic concepts: finished-looking color drawings that portray Mr. Ackerley’s day-to-day life; simpler drawings in the elongated style of a New Yorker cartoon that evoke Mr. Ackerley’s fantasies; black-and-white line illustrations of his distant memories; and fanciful yellow-pad scribblings.

The movie only fleetingly succumbs to anthropomorphism in line drawings that show a half-human Tulip in a dress, holding court. John Avarese’s agreeable light-jazz score, which occasionally dips into a classical mode, lends the film a jaunty buoyancy.

Besides Ackerley, “My Dog Tulip” (whose title character is mercifully never given a human voice) is peopled with eccentrics, each given an astutely chosen actor and a sharply drawn personality by the animators. Lynn Redgrave, who died in May and to whom the movie is dedicated, plays Ackerley’s sister Nancy, who moves in to be Tulip’s daytime caretaker while Ackerley is working and competes with her brother for Tulip’s affection.

A veterinarian of astonishing empathy with animals is voiced by Isabella Rossellini. Examining Tulip for worms, she gently explains to Ackerley: “Tulip is a good girl. You are the trouble. She is in love with you.”

Brian Murray plays the dual roles of Ackerley’s indolent World War I army buddy, Captain Pugh, whom he visits at his country farm with an unruly Tulip in hand, and Mr. Blandish, a dog owner whose proud German shepherd, Max, is rebuffed by Tulip.

With its meticulously detailed observations of Tulip’s excretory rituals and anatomical changes when in heat, “My Dog Tulip” might almost be called a dirty movie. It unblinkingly observes the messes Tulip makes and shows her being mounted while in heat.

One of the most embarrassing messes takes place in front of the store of a green grocer whose wife (Redgrave) is so irate that she refuses to thank Ackerley even after he cleans it up. Another is made in an off-limits area of Ackerley’s home after Tulip finally produces a litter and senses that Ackerley intends to kill the pups. Their father ends up not being a male with a pedigree but Dusty, the “disreputable dirty ragamuffin” from next door.

In a final printed statement scrolled across the screen, Ackerley contemplates a dog’s frustration at trying to understand the human mind. As his imagination soars, he wonders if thousands of years ago, humans came under the protection of dogs, which tried to tame them and failed.

Directed and animated by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger; written by Mr. Fierlinger, based on the book by J. R. Ackerley; music by John Avarese; produced by Norman Twain, Howard Kaminsky and Frank Pellegrino; released by New Yorker Films. At Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. This film is not rated.