I've never seen this film, just released on Criterion, though I've heard of it. The reviews aren't great; more interesting to me is that it's based on a memoir by French novelist Romaine Gary, husband of the actress Jean Seberg (from Godard's Breathless).
Sylvia Adams of the
Evil Monito blog describes better than I could, "...in 1968, a German shepherd sauntered into their home. And in a strange twist of irony, the beautiful canine that graced their lives, on compulsion, viciously attacked the couple’s friends who happened to be black. It finally dawned on them that this dog had been programmed as a young pup by racist white policemen–a loathsome practice done behind close doors and a brutal reality of racism in America. When Seberg realized what transpired, she was heartbroken."
"...what made her so damn intriguing was her political activism; particularly her heavy involvement with the Black Panthers during the Civil Rights Movement. Her activities inevitably brought her under the scrutiny of the notorious J. Edgar Hoover and the Feds, who tried multiple times to slander her name in the public eye. Still she continued her clandestine meetings, held right in her Hollywood home; around the same time that John Lennon had famously held ties with Bobby Seale.
No one suspected this petite movie star with the face of an angel would be so strong in her political resolve. She fought valiantly against the racism that covered America like a heavy, wet blanket. Not the least dampened, she endured, even as the Feds leaked stories that she was impregnated by one of the Black Panthers, whose cause she fought for. When her child died at birth, she insisted on burying the infant in a glass coffin, to show the world their bald-faced lies."
She committed suicide at age 40. very sad.
