Honeygiver among the dogs Film Difficulty Ranking: 3
If you’re looking for a misty mystery built around the reputation of an attractive independent woman in Bhutan you’ve come to the right place. You’ll join a policeman sent to a small town in the mountains to uncover a murder mystery. The main suspect? A ‘flirtatious demoness’ who is said to possess magical powers. Honeygiver Among the Dogs promises dreams, eerie music, tranquil landscape, and a mystical plot which keeps you guessing.
From: Bhutan, Asia
Watch: Trailer, JustWatch
Trailer: White Sun, Spoor, Golden Kingdom
The Breakdown
Honeygiver Among the Dogs starts with a group of policeman searching for a woman at night. She’s the lead suspect in the murder of the town’s abbot. They get to her house but they’re too late, she’s already left, thanks to the help of a young girl.
The next morning, they can see the small rural town they’ve arrived in set at the top of a misty valley. As the locals awaken, Kinley, the leader of the police operation gets a call from his boss in the city to get to work questioning the locals for evidence of the lead suspect’s involvement. Unfortunately for him, the locals aren’t much help. All they talk about is how the lead suspect (Choden) is an attractive demoness that will trick him and seduce him into believing she is innocent. Still no hard evidence or confession. So, to get her to confess without endangering himself, Kinley (as recommended by his boss) decides to assume a disguise, find her, and gain her trust.
Kinley manages to track her down at a bus stop leaving for a nearby city. So he joins the bus and waits for the right moment to introduce himself. However, before he can do it, she introduces herself and asks if he can be her traveling companion to make it look like she isn’t the single woman the police are looking for. In what appears to be a win-win for each of them, they agree to walk to the city on foot through the forests. It’s Kinley’s opportunity to try and question her about the murder, and her opportunity to evade the police.
how society creates a witch
In the opening 15-20 minutes of the film Kinley and Choden’s paths do not cross. In fact, we don’t see much of Choden in the opening apart from a short scene in which a young village girl warns her that the police is looking for her, which gives her time to escape. Because she doesn’t appear in the opening, we don’t get any character development from her until she starts to appear in more scenes after Kinley first sees her on the bus. However, by this point her character has already been developed by the locals from her village without her control.
The locals mention that she’s attractive and not from the town originally. They also mention that she’s had a failed marriage and mostly keeps to herself. However, they also believe she’s dangerous, referring to her as a ‘demoness’ and a ‘flirtatious seductress’ with magical powers. Before we’ve properly met her, the village locals have already planted a seed in our (and Kinley’s) minds that Choden could be a witch with strange powers. So even if we believe that she’s probably been labelled a witch because she’s an attractive outcast who lives life differently to them, the seed of doubt is still there before she has a chance to develop her character herself.
This seed starts to grow in Kinley’s mind. He’s obviously taken aback by her beauty and reputation, and as a result, starts to having dreams and visions of her controlling him. The more magical dreams he has, the more Choden fits the character that the villagers described her as: a ‘demoness’. They planted a seed in his (and our) mind, and his dreams are watering it. With a lack of dialogue from Choden herself, she is rarely afforded the opportunity to develop her own character. As a result, her character is created by everyone but her, which creates her as a seductive demoness, and also revealing how society creates a witch.
What to Watch Next
The first film that came to mind when I saw Honeygiver Among the Dogs was White Sun. Both feature an outcast that returns to their small town in the country despite the grudges the town holds against them. Both feature another character that operates as a detective on behalf of the audience, to uncover why the outcast was initially ostracized from society. They’re also both set in a similar geography, with White Sun set in the Nepalese Himalayas, and Honeygiver Among the Dogs in the Bhutanese Himalayas. As a result, there’s plenty of scenic misty mountain shots and dreamy landscapes.
Secondly, I’d like to recommend watching Spoor. It’s a female led environmental murder mystery (of sorts) set in the Polish countryside. It’s misty mysterious (there’s a lot of mist and mystery) and it also features an independent, female outcast involved in a intriguing small town plot. For more ostracized women, you should also check out I Am Not A Witch from Zambia.
Lastly, check out Golden Kingdom. It follows a group of four young Buddhist monks who take charge of their remote monastery when their leader goes away for the few days. Like Honeygiver Among the Dogs it features a lot of dreams, and a male character trying to understand the past.
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