If there is an animal whose legendary proximity makes us curious about the human community, it would undoubtedly be the dog. Norman Nedellec wins the bet of bringing back into fashion a less famous text by Miguel de Cervantes, The Colloquium of the Dogs , in which Berganza and Scipio, two canines, discuss an entire night in front of a hospital. This animal fable paints a vitriolic portrait of the human race capable of the greatest baseness. The filmmaker offers a brilliant adaptation in a brief but ample gesture that takes literally the idea of ​​these beasts gifted with speech. In a colorful staging, he uses the tricks and tips of cinema to make two big dogs, Ivar and Drogon, talk while locked in a car. The Koulechov effect works wonderfully. At the center, a few well-chosen pieces of the original text to which is grafted a network of heterogeneous visual escapes that take us from meadows burned by a summer sun to the tombstones of the cemetery of the Dogs of Asnières-sur-Seine, from the blue of a sky to that of the flashing lights of an ambulance. Attention and precision dominate the film: the way in which the harpsichord converses with the noise of the cars, the rhythm and delicacy of the diction of the narrators who lend their voices, the place and intensity of each shot, the sensitivity with which the animal is filmed. From the apologue, Norman Nedellec keeps the timeless philosophical depth. From the cinema, he draws a playful fabric conducive to the very fair commentary of our contemporary realities. Thus, Le colloquium des chiens , mixed with humor and poetry, navigates between a playful joy and a beautiful gravity. That of these faithful companions who humbly hold up to us the mirror of our condition.