MINE
Directed by Geralyn Pezanoski
Produced by Pezanoski & Erin Essenmacher
Released by Film Movement
USA. 81 min. Not Rated

People always love a bit with a dog. Mine, a documentary about Hurricane Katrina survivors and their pets, milks that bit for all that it is worth. Directed by Geralyn Pezanoski, the film follows the journey of five New Orleans residents who are trying to reunite with the pets they left behind during the evacuation before Katrina. Interweaving the five storylines with interviews from animal rescue workers, the documentary hammers home two points. The first: Katrina was a badly handled disaster with repressions that will reverberate in years to come. The second: People really love their pets.

Pezanoski seemingly tries to keep the sentiment down to a minimum, but her carefully chosen subjects deliberately tug at the heartstrings. The interviews, a series of tired faces beleaguered by dashed hopes, are interspersed by injured and battered animals being rescued from abandoned homes, under wreckage, or found trapped on roofs. The result is a PETA ad without the activist edge.

It’s hard not to sympathize with the survivors. Two of them, Gloria Richardson and Malvin Cavalier, are elderly dog owners who live alone. Each battles to reclaim their pets with (fortunately) happy results. Others, like hotel worker Jessie Pullins, are unable to recover their animals because of shelter and adoption policies. When people have lost every material possession, it becomes clear how much any bond, no matter how small, is enlarged in worth. What is difficult to understand is how the simple issue of returning a pet to its rightful owner becomes so complicated. One ownership drama, between electrical contractor Victor Marino and housewife Tiffany Mansfield, takes months to resolve. Others are forced to resort to litigation, with mixed results. Before Katrina, there were no laws involving the rescue and evacuation of animals in a natural disaster, and it is unclear whether a change in pet custody laws will occur in the wake of the hurricane.

In the end, Mine offers no surprises. People (especially, it seems, Californians) will always rally to help a stray animal in need. But watching Malvin Cavalier shuffle about his government-issued trailer that still, three years after the disaster, remains his home, one wonders how far that sympathy extends when it comes to their fellow humans.  Lisa Bernier
January 15, 2010