Part coming-of-age queer romance, part baffling crime drama, Pet Shop Days premiered all the way back at 2023’s Venice Film Festival. Since then, it has bounced around from festival to festival, evading me at every turn despite my voracious hunger to consume LGBT content. Finally, Olmo Schnabel’s directorial debut has arrived in all its uneven glory. Entertainingly messy, narratively scattered, and poorly acted, Pet Shop Days tries hard to be deep but ends up a pretentious misfire instead.
We start from the perspective of Alejandro (Dario Yazbek Bernal), a troubled youth with a tumultuous relationship with his father, Castro (Jordi Mollà). He and his mother have plans to flee and head to America, but she ends up beaten and bloodied before the film proper can kick into high speed. Next, Pet Shop Days shifts perspective to that of struggling dog walker and native New Yorker, Jack (Jack Irv). Jack’s family life also has a strange dynamic—while not an abusive one like Alejandro, Jack’s mother (Emmanuelle Seigner) seems weirdly obsessed with him, whilst his father (Willem Dafoe) presents as a grumpy cheater frustrated with Jack’s lack of ambition. Jack accidentally bumps into Alejandro on the street while walking a gaggle of dogs. Nothing about the first time they lock eyes seems to indicate the beginnings of a whirlwind romance. In need of a job imminently, Alejandro catches an ad for a pet store on the television in his hotel room. He heads to the very same shop where Jack happens to work—donned in a blazer but no shirt—begging for Jack to put in a good word with the owner.
If one didn’t know any better, a good assumption to make would be that these two polar opposite personalities will next fall in love, blazing a path of destruction in their wake. Certainly, the scattershot script cooked up by Olmo Schnabel, Jack Irv, and Galen Core posits this core relationship will be powerful enough for audiences to buy into that reality. Unfortunately, the loose “love story” only highlights the toxic nature of their connection. Examining the sexuality of either character will also lead to head-scratching confusions. Obviously, the spectrum of human sexuality is a complex and oftentimes confounding concept. For Alejandro and Jack, the duo initially hook up in the midst of sex with other women, at once transforming the act into a foursome before it morphs into a one-on-one. Their relationship only gets stranger from there, refusing to explore whether the men are bisexual, or just actively engaging in self-destructive behavior. At one point, Jack point blank asks Alejandro when he knew he was gay. Not only is it brushed off, but Jack fails to engage in the conversation regarding his own personal experiences.
Alejandro acts as a live wire, spreading his toxicity to Jack in an uneven exchange. He encourages that the duo rob old women blind, or snort numerous substances up their noses. Each desperate act they commit pushes them further into chaos. While their story plays out, Castro sends a family friend to retrieve his son, and bring him back to Mexico by any means necessary. Again, making an assumption about the trajectory of this side plot, such as an eventual confrontation between father and son, may lead to some disappointment. Obstacles and tertiary characters seem to exist merely to flesh out the world, rather than to add substantial texture or meaning to the grander themes.
Pet Shop Days has some interesting interplay between characters, as well as individual moments of intrigue and occasional titillation. Alejandro and Jack certainly have stellar chemistry, even when the actors playing them aren’t exactly up to the task of carrying a full-length movie on their shoulders. If the end result was satisfying in any way, it would be more palatable. As much as I would love to endorse any queer movie for at least making an effort, Schnabel’s film feels entirely too cobbled together to recommend. For an entertaining little distraction, there are admittedly worse ways to pass the time than with Pet Shop Days.
Pet Shop Days opens up for business, exclusively in theaters in New York City on March 15th and in Los Angeles on March 28th.
