THE STORY – A single woman living on a remote Chilean island adopts a stray puppy, which unlocks memories of a traumatic incident from her past.
THE CAST – Manuela Oyarzún, David Gaete, Selton Mello, Paula Luchsinger, Paula Dinamarca, Rafaella Grimberg & Gianina Fruttero
THE TEAM – Dominga Sotomayor (Director/Writer) & Inès Bortagaray (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 113 Minutes
Wisely sticking with the Spanish-language title rather than directly translating it as “The Bitch,” “La Perra” is a dog-centric drama from Chilean writer-director Dominga Sotomayor that premiered in the Director’s Fortnight section of the 79th Cannes Film Festival. Like her previous drama, “Swim to Me,” the film is adapted from a novel by Colombian author Pilar Quintana, and the result is a compellingly moving drama with a pair of terrific performances (one human, one canine) at its center. Beneath its deceptively simple premise is a poignant meditation on memory, loneliness, and the traumatic wounds that shape one’s life.
Set on a remote Chilean island, the film stars Manuela Oyarzun as Silvia, a forty-something woman who lives with her partner, Mario (David Gaete), and has chosen not to have children, despite some pressure from her wider family to do so. Silvia’s daily routine involves harvesting and selling seaweed, but her life is changed when she impulsively adopts an adorable, rambunctious puppy, naming him Yuri, after a popular singer. Yuri enjoys the freedom of the island, frequently spending his afternoons barking at sheep, but after a fireworks display spooks him, he runs away and disappears, leaving Silvia bereft. As she continues her search for Yuri, something stirs in Silvia, and she unlocks a traumatic childhood memory involving a disappearance.
The flashback sequences are superbly handled — lines, images, or locations sometimes trigger them, but they unfold in almost dreamlike fashion, as if Silvia is lost in thought. One key location is a cave by the beach that floods when the tide rushes in — that proves central to the traumatic incident, but it’s also where Silvia fears she might have lost Yuri. The script — co-written by Sotomayor and Bortagaray — is beautifully understated, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions about the long-term effect of Silvia’s childhood trauma without any expository dialogue or sentimentality. To that end, it’s a quietly powerful study of grief and guilt that achieves a strong emotional impact, steeped in heartache.
Manuela Oyarzun is excellent as Silvia, delivering a remarkable performance as a woman who has kept her emotions locked away for three decades. Her canine co-star (also called Yuri) is equally good, displaying real personality and forming a touching bond with her adopted parent. Happily, he deservedly picked up the coveted Palm Dog award for Best Canine Performance at this year’s Cannes. Kudos are definitely due to the casting department because Rafaella Grimberg, who plays young Silvia in the flashbacks, bears an uncanny resemblance to Oyarzun, to the point where you can scarcely believe they are mother and daughter. The casting of young Yuri is also an excellent match — she’s played by a puppy called Tormenta (or Storm), and she’s just as adorable as her adult counterpart. Elsewhere in the cast, Selton Mello (from “I’m Still Here”) makes a strong impression as Duda, a former friend of Silvia’s parents, while Gaete is solid as Mario, even if he isn’t given too much to do. There’s also a colorful turn from Paula Dinamarca as Xiamena, a local eccentric who wants to breed Yuri with one of her own dogs.
Shot on Chile’s remote Santa Maria Island, the rugged landscape perfectly suits the story, both in terms of the close-to-nature physicality of Silvia’s job and her self-imposed emotional hardness. The island also comes with its own built-in surreal detail: a burst underground gas pipeline means there are occasionally flames on the water near the central cave. Accordingly, Sotomayor creates a strong sense of place that feels cut off from the outside world (apart from a single incursion: a reality TV music competition show that Silvia and David are obsessed with), a feeling that intensifies when family and friends visit Silvia. Similarly, there is striking cinematography from director of photography Simone D’Arcangelo, with whom Sotomayor conjures up several memorable images, most notably an excited young Yuri barking up a storm and first scaring off some sheep before being pointedly ignored by a trio of horses, who give the equestrian equivalent of a Gallic shrug. The pleasure of these sequences is further enhanced by having the camera at Yuri’s height for a dog ’s-eye view. Composer Clint Mansell makes a somewhat unexpected but delightful contribution with a superb score, and the film is further heightened by spectacular sound design that accentuates the coastal location and the windswept nature of day-to-day life on the island. This is particularly effective in the cave sequences, where the sounds are ominous and terrifying, drowning out the children’s voices.
In short, this is an emotionally engaging, beautifully shot piece of work that is all the more affecting for how understated it all is. It’s the kind of devastating film that stays with you long after the credits roll, carried by its atmosphere and themes such as the unmistakable ache of loss. Also, somebody get that dog a three-picture deal!
