I guess (as always) I ought to warn you that some of what follows by way of description can be considered *SPOILERS* ... so you've been warned. Year of the Dog is about a woman's descent into obsessive animal rights activism after the death of her dog, the only companion upon whom she can reliably depend. This much is clear witin the first 20 minutes of the film wherein Peggy (played by Molly Shannon) is shown having conversations - check that - listening to all the various people in her life talk at her, more than to her. When her dog dies, she is recruited to adopt one of the soon-to-be-terminated SPCA cases handled by Newt (Peter Sarsgaard). Just as she believes she's finally found someone to believe in, she is very lightly rebuffed and her own social distortion is ratched up quickly.

This movie is similar in tone to White's Chuck and Buck, and while the pace differs greatly between the two, White is equally adept here as director Miguel Arteta was in C&B at taking a simple but nuanced idea and putting it under a microscope for well over an hour without you ever feeling rushed or bored with it. He is a patient director. The only complaint I have in comparison to that earlier film is that in Chuck and Buck, his misfit's difficulties are so tied to his interaction with only one other character that you always know where the center of the film sits. In Year of the Dog, I think White moves off the dynamic between Peggy and Newt too quickly, leaving us alone with Peggy and, having no one specific for her to play off of, I think the movie becomes a shade less tense.

While Molly Shannon was not particularly brilliant in this movie, I do think she's about the best female equivalent of Mike White as an actor and protagonist as you might find: able to convey sincerity and empathy, but also skilled at mining the subtle comic moments necessary to make White's film the awkward delight that never quite puts you off entirely. Peter Sarsgaard played Newt note-perfect by capturing that sexually disinterested and somewhat self-absorbed and self-righteous eco-lefty mentality.

Both White's movies have at their core the idea that certain episodes in life that can seem simple and/or just slightly more than ordinary can explode with sub-psychic reverberations that might throw lives off the rails. And yet both of White's films have somewhat upbeat endings, where we are encouraged to believe that his lost souls gain just enough clarity to begin a reclamation of their sanity. I enjoy that he merely points you in that direction and doesn't offer any guarantees, and his delicate touch keeps from totally illuminating the dark corners we've just been through.