“Pet Shop Days” captures those reckless nights where it feels like anything can happen — and quite often, anything and everything does.
Olmo Schnabel‘s directorial debut premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, and has a star-studded cast to boot. Schnabel, the son of artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel, co-wrote the film with lead star Jack Irv and Galen Core.
The official synopsis reads: “In an act of desperation, impulsive black sheep Alejandro (Dario Yazbek Bernal) flees his home in Mexico. On the run from his unforgiving father, Alejandro finds himself in New York City, where he meets Jack (Jack Irv), a college-age pet store employee with similar parental baggage. Together the two enter a whirlwind romance sending them down the rabbit hole of drugs and depravity in Manhattan’s underworld. When Alejandro’s past threatens to catch up with him, Jack is forced to choose between his family and a life on the run.”
Willem Dafoe (who starred in Julian Schnabel’s Vincent Van Gogh biopic “At Eternity’s Gate”) and Emmanuelle Seigner play Jack’s affluent parents. The ensemble cast also includes Peter Sarsgaard, Maribel Verdú, and Jordi Mollà also star in the film.
The “After Hours” comparisons with the plot are no accident: auteur Martin Scorsese is among the executive producers, as well as Jeremy O. Harris and Michel Franco.
IndieWire’s review also compared “Pet Shop Days” to “Uncut Gems,” with the film having the same “grit of 1980s New York or even more recently ‘Uncut Gems,’ cell phones and screens rarely making an appearance.”
The “debauched trail of drugs, sex, and crime” that is the backdrop of Jack and Alejandro’s romance climaxes in a “scene of carnage that feels inevitable.”
IndieWire film editor Ryan Lattanzio wrote that “there’s enough swagger behind the camera to indicate the millennial filmmaker has his own irreverent point of view that should separate him from his father’s legacy as he moves forth in Hollywood.”
“Pet Shop Days” is executive produced by Giovanni Corrado, Raffaella Viscardi, Moreno Zani, Malcom Pagani, Renato Ragosta, Livio Strazzera, Theo Niarchos, Aimone Ripa Di Meana, PJ Van Sandwijk, Peter Brant Jr., and Reka Posta.
“Pet Shop Days” premieres March 15 at the Roxy Cinema in New York and March 28 at the Now Instant Image Hall in Los Angeles, with a national rollout later from Utopia. Check out the trailer below.
