Dogs Don't Wear Pants

Juha, a heart surgeon, loses his wife in a drowning accident while the family is on a retreat by a lake. Years later he remains emotionally numb and unable to connect with the people around him, including his teenage daughter Elli. When he gives in to her wish and takes her to get her tongue pierced, he meets Mona, a dominatrix, and begins visiting her studio. What develops between them draws him into an unconventional world in which pain and desire are bound together.

J-P Valkeapää directed the film and wrote the screenplay with Juhana Lumme. It is a Finnish-Latvian co-production, produced by Aleksi Bardy and Helen Vinogradov, and it followed Valkeapää's earlier features in the 2010s. Pekka Strang plays Juha and Krista Kosonen plays Mona, with Ilona Huhta as Elli, Jani Volanen as Juha's co-worker, Oona Airola as Satu and Iiris Anttila as the piercer. Thirty-three cast members and fifty-nine crew members are credited.

Made for about two million dollars, the film was released in 2019 and runs 105 minutes. Audiences are positive but measured, with a rating of 6.7 from around 8,000 votes on IMDb and 6.9 from roughly 200 votes on TMDB. Film critics, whose rating stands at 7.5 from thirty reviews, received it more warmly than general viewers did.