LAWN DOGS

LAWN DOGS (1997) Here’s a little undiscovered gem, a bone for you’all to chew on while we wait for Dakota Fanning to make up her mind—Let’s rewind fourteen years to 1997 and imagine the O.C.'s Mischa Barton as cute a ten-year-old.
    Newly arrived in an up-scale housing development, quiet ten-year-old Devon  Stockard (Barton) doesn't quite fit in. Ignoring the urgings of her social-climbing father, Devon chooses the company of Trent (Sam Rockwell), a young man who makes his living mowing lawns, rather than  the "camp fire" girls her own age. The friendship between Devon and Trent continues  to blossom until  one night she unexpected  visits his trailer home.  Although their relationship is a completely innocent, it is obvious that such a relationship between an adult man and a little girl is open for misinterpretation.  
     Lawn Dogs is one of the best treatises on innocence and platonic relationships ever filmed. Trent is an honest hardworking noble fellow, he likes Devon but only in the purest “little sister” platonic way. Devon likes Trent, it remains clear from the onset that she is the instigator, but it’s a innocent little girl crush and nothing in the way of anything sexual ever develops between them. Yet appearances are everything, and appearances threaten to tear the relationship apart. This is a sad tale of unrequited platonic love.
 

     There is a genuine friendship here between an adult man and this little girl. Even when the girl takes off her shirt and shows Trent her scar from open heart surgery, he is uncomfortable; he has great hesitation even looking at her, and when he finally does touch her, its clear that its a loving compassionate touch. Devon for her part isn’t baiting him or tempting him by flouting her naked chest.  She's honest and sincere and her motives are pure. She never tries to kiss him or be romantic with him. Devon sees Trent as a real friend, someone she can trust. She shows him her scar, to prove that she has "scars" too.  Its a tender moment, there is only friendship between them.

     This movie is full of uncompromising images. There is the scene where young Devon climbs onto the roof, tosses her nightgown into the wind and stands naked on the roof top, she howls like a wolf. One could draw all kinds of Freudian symbolism from this scene. I just found it a visceral experience, an act of rebellion; a protest against her parent’s skewed values and the confines of life in a gated-community. Devon’s naked roof top spectacle was meant as a public exhibition of her own “imperfections.” Meaning, that Devon was to all outward appearances is a perfect little girl, yet she was scared, damaged goods from her heart surgery, an imperfection her parents want to desperately conceal, yet Devon felt was an intrinsic part of who she was, not something to be shuttered away, but literally shouted from the roof tops.

LAWN DOGS (1997) ***