There's something a bit different from CinemaItaliaUK this week, as it ventures into animation. Set during a conflict that has much in common with the Second World War and introducing younger audiences to difficult themes like hated, incarceration, and inhumanity, Simona Cornacchia and Anna Russo's Arf (2024) also explores loyalty, resistance, and standing up for what is right. It does so in a muted, but appropriate visual style that will engage children and adults alike and prompt plenty of discussion on the way home.
Knocked cold by the butt of a rifle while trying to protect her female owner and her tiny baby, Bianca awakes to find the cosy apartment has been trashed by brutish soldiers. Wandering into the empty streets, the white dog takes cover from a tank rolling past a poster depicting a peculiar little man with a toothbrush moustache. Emerging from her hiding place, Bianca hears a cry and is surprised to find her owner's gurgling baby wrapped in his bundle in the street. Gripping the swaddling in her mouth, she runs off to find a safe place.
Some years later, Bianca and Arf live in the country with lots of other stray dogs. Lupo, the leader of the pack, doesn't like Arf because he is different and growls at him, even after he frees a frisky pup named Skizzo, who had got itself locked inside a discarded fridge. However, the fearless boy simply takes Lupo's face in his hands and presses their foreheads together to show they have no need to be enemies.
Food is scarce, so Arf and Skizzo set out for the town. They see a queue of people outside a butcher's shop, where the thinnest slices of ham are being rationed. Creeping round the back, however, Arf sees men in blue uniforms loading sausages, joints, and steaks into a van. So he and his canine companion help themselves and complete their getaway when the pursuing corporal trips and falls.
Bianca is proud of Arf when he brings back enough for everyone to have their fill. Even Lupo gratefully accepts three sausages. As they sleep off their feed, however, the corporal and two soldiers creep into their glade and Arf is arrested, despite Bianca growling at gunpoint.
She follows him to headquarters, where Arf annoys the corporal by being unable to answer his questions. Moreover, he splots ink all over his transfer document and the duty adjutant at the concentration camp is dismayed by the messy paper. He gets no further with his questions, but he does force Arf to change the furry garment that Bianca had made him for blue-and-white striped pyjamas. As he's unable to walk in the wooden clogs he's given, Arf carries them, as he is led into a cavernous shed, where two children with shaved heads are peeling potatoes.
The adjutant drops Arf in the bowl and he shakes himself dry, as the kids look on in bemusement. They succeed in teaching Arf to say `mamma', but he has no idea how to peel a potato and doesn't like the taste when he bites into one. He doesn't stay in the shed for long, however, as the commandant wants to see him.
He is singing along to `Figaro' on his gramophone and is far from amused when Arf bounces in and scratches the record. As he communicates like a canine, the commandant orders him to be kept with the camp guard dogs and Arf is marched past a girl in a headscarft, who had just noticed a blue flower growing through the cobbles while mopping a step. She feels sorry for Arf, but he is happy to be with the fearsome-looking Dobermans, whose leader, Luther, sniffs him and joins him in howling at the moon - just as Bianca does on the road, as she has been following the trail that Arf had left by peeing against the van door.
Next morning, the adjutant opens the dog shed to find Arf snuggled among the Dobermans. Indeed, they form a protective ring around him and refuse to let the adjutant or his men approach him. Arf has found a red ball and he throws it for the hounds to charge after and the commandant is furious that his dogs are playing on the day that the dictator is coming to the camp to make an important speech.
He has arrived at the front gate and isn't impressed that no one is answering the doorbell. Getting out of his car, the dictator is too short to see over the boom barrier and he wonders what on earth is going on inside. While he waits in the commandant's office for a barber to trim his moustache, Arf picks up a familiar scent and breaks off from moving the blue flower to a safer place. Following his nose, the long-haired boy finds a drainpipe at the edge of the camp and hugs a grimy Bianca, as she pushes her way through. She growls at Luther, but Arf shows his mother that he is friendly and he toddles off in excitement.
Arf goes into the dormitory and urges all the children to come outside. He bundles into the commandant's office and finds the dictator dozing with his boots off (and a hole in his sock). He tries to explain to `Ralph' how difficult it is to order people around when you often end up having to shoot them, as nothing gets done. Unable to find a barber, the commandant offers to trim the dictator's moustache, but he overdoes it and even Arf can't help but stare.
On seeing the dictator take to the stage with only a few wisps of hair on his upper lip, everyone on parade gasps - especially when the dictator's wig blows off. The adjutant accuses him of being a spy and he is cornered on the roof of a tank. Meanwhile, Arf finds the girl with the headscarf and coaxes her into running away with the other kids.
As gunfire rings out, Bianca and Luther help the children escape through the drainpipe. Arf goes in search of his fur and returns his uniform to the astonished commandant. He hugs his mother, as Luther leads the way to freedom. As the dictator fumes in a cage at the camp, Arf, Bianca, and Luther are greeted with welcoming howls by Skizzo and the other dogs, who befriend the children, as they all play together in the verdant country sunshine.
Closing on a shot of the commandant emerging from the pipe to run away in his boxer shorts, this is a charming film with a deceptively simple graphic style that gives the action a sense of nostalgia and intimacy. But it's not without its pitfalls. As Roberto Benigni discovered with Life Is Beautiful (1998), it's always risky trying to find the lighter side of something a hideous as genocide. Cornacchia and Russo wisely opt not to give their story in a recognisable Second World War setting. The architecture of the town is generic, while there are no identifiable symbols or insignia on the various uniforms. It's implied that Arf's mother is a Jewish woman caught in a razzia raid, but Cornacchia and Russo decide against giving the camp kids similarly distinguishing features.
The dictator is clearly modelled on Adolf Hitler, but his hair colouring is different and he represents universal tyranny rather than an individual Führer. In this regard, the film follows the à clef example set by Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940). However, the scene in which Arf and the dittatore come face to face recalls the amusing encounter between Stewie Griffin and Hitler in the 2008 Family Guy episode, `Road to Berlin'.
But humour is only part of the film's brief, as Cornacchia and Russo also want to show younger viewers how cruel people can be to each other and to animals. By not pinning the conflict to a specific timeframe, they are also able to point out that such barbarity is not confined to history. The moral that we should be kind to those who are different to ourselves is always worth reiterating, particularly in our troubled world. The earlier children hear it and take it to heart the better, which makes Arf all the more worthwhile.