And the Oscar for best boi goes to …

Adding animals to a scene means adding time, which means adding money to the budget. Their absence is usually a matter of practicality in a business that is forever looking for cutbacks. So when they do show up, it can feel momentous.

I’ve always been partial to the way the Coen brothers incorporated a cat into 2013’s “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which stars Oscar Isaac as a lonely, morose, ’60s-era folk singer. Early in the film, an orange cat makes a running leap onto his sleeping chest as dawn breaks, offering a curt meow and then some purring. Yes, you think, this is how cats behave. The cat belongs to the Gorfeins, who let Llewyn crash at their apartment the night before. But when he goes to leave, the cat escapes out the front door, which locks behind them both. His only option is to carry the cat around with him, which includes a memorable sequence on the subway. The cat is transfixed by the view out the window, as the tunnel zips by.

“The film doesn’t really have a plot. That concerned us at one point,” said Joel Coen when the movie premiered. “That’s why we threw the cat in.” They would regret that choice, calling it “nightmarish.” On an episode of NPR’s “Fresh Air,” they recalled their animal trainer telling them “a dog wants to please you; a cat only wants to please itself. It was just long, painstaking, frustrating days shooting the cat.”

Sometimes a film gets it all wrong. In 2021, Tom Hanks starred in the little-seen, weirdly upbeat apocalyptic Apple TV+ movie “Finch,” about a man who is dying. The atmosphere is unlivable, so his existence is spent in a bunker. His only companion is a scruffy dog named Goodyear and he builds an android to look after his mutt when he’s gone. But Goodyear has no discernible personality. It’s conspicuous and disappointing.

American films are usually terrible at this sort of thing. Directors outside the U.S. tend to generate more interesting results.

In the 2016 Colombia drama “Perros” (“Dogs”), John Leguizamo plays a man serving time for a murder. The prison is a brutal environment, and his emotional survival becomes dependent on a sweet brown dog that also lives there. In interviews, Leguizamo said the dog wasn’t easy to work with. But you would never know it watching her cheerful interactions on screen amidst the bleak concrete setting.

Perhaps my favorite is a modest 2015 film from Chile called “Perla” (“Pearl”), which imagines the inner life of a street dog in Santiago named Pearl. All she wants is human companionship and her running monologue is so hopeful and plaintive. Writer-director Sergio Castilla cast his own dog to play Pearl. He adopted her a few years prior, after finding her wounded on a street near his home. Alas, I can’t seem to find any streaming options for the movie.

Human-animal bonds captured on screen are an illusion. A performance like any other. And yet you never question it in “Anatomy of a Fall.”

“I always leave room for improvisation for the dog so that he can suggest things and make it natural,” Messi’s owner told GQ.

Off set, he is resolutely dog. “We live in the countryside and Messi loves going for walks and playing ball. For him the ball is sacred! Otherwise at home he is a fairly calm dog. The quiet force.”

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(Nina Metz is a Chicago Tribune critic who covers TV and film.)

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