{"id":295,"date":"2026-05-20T07:36:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T07:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=295"},"modified":"2026-05-20T07:36:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T07:36:06","slug":"la-perra-review-dominga-sotomayor-shores-up-her-reputation-with-an-elegant-unsentimental-story-of-trauma-and-healing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=295","title":{"rendered":"\u2018La Perra\u2019 Review: Dominga Sotomayor Shores Up Her Reputation With an Elegant, Unsentimental Story of Trauma and Healing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tFlames ripple across the tide in a jagged rockpool near the shore of the lonesome, wind-whipped Chilean island that houses \u201cLa Perra\u201c: a film often content to surrender to the elements, though rarely in quite such unexpected combination. As it turns out, there\u2019s a rational explanation for this flammable water \u2014 years ago, a gas pipeline burst on that spot, making for something of a famed local curiosity \u2014 but it\u2019s an aptly uncanny image in Chilean writer-director Dominga Sotomayor\u2018s arresting, intriguing new film. A portrait of independent womanhood in unforgiving surrounds, \u201cLa Perra\u201d trades heavily in matters that resist easy explanation, from an unresolved mystery of disappearance in the protagonist\u2019s past, to the unknowable mind of her wayward dog.<\/p>\n

Read more Andy Garcia\u2019s Neo-Noir \u2018Diamond\u2019 Earns 7-Minute Ovation at Cannes<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tRecently premiered in the Directors\u2019 Fortnight sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival, Sotomayor\u2019s first film since last year\u2019s Netflix-backed \u201cSwim to Me\u201d drifts far from the comparatively broad commercial accessibility of that for-hire project, circling back toward the intimate, off-kilter sensibility of her highly personal breakout works \u201cThursday to Sunday\u201d and \u201cToo Late to Die Young.\u201d This despite the fact that \u201cLa Perra\u201d (which translates as \u201cThe Bitch,\u201d though the film retains its Spanish title internationally) is, like \u201cSwim to Me,\u201d an adaptation, drawn from a well-regarded, widely translated novel of the same title by Colombian author Pilar Quintana.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe dog of the title \u2014 a spirited, unwieldy brown-and-black mutt of indistinct provenance, named Yuri \u2014 would appear to be the new film\u2019s warmest selling point, holding the camera as she does with enough expressive agency to render her a character in her own right, alongside protagonist Silvia, a hardy rural survivor played, in an excellent, intensely contained performance, by Manuela Oyarz\u00fan. (Yuri, the immensely appealing animal-shelter find who plays the dog of the same name, duly gets second billing in the credits.) But if \u201cLa Perra\u201d initially promises a gratifying bonding tale of two free spirits, human and canine, lovingly united, nothing in Sotomayor\u2019s increasingly melancholic film proceeds quite as expected: It\u2019s not for dog lovers of a more sentimental persuasion, though its behavioral observation across species is rewardingly detailed and on point.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rugged, scarred, khaki-colored landscape of Chile\u2019s remote Santa Maria Island, meanwhile, plays at least as significant a role in proceedings as any character in Sotomayor and co-writer In\u00e9s Bortagaray\u2019s script. This distinctively harsh choice of locale, and the ways in which it shapes the protagonist\u2019s existence, plays a major role \u2014 perhaps the major role \u2014 in redetermining Quintana\u2019s Colombia-set story for the screen. <\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Her Private Hell\u2019 Review: Nicolas Winding Refn Gets Lost in His Own Private Filmmaking Hell with This David Lynch-on-Bad-Acid Disaster<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tLike many of the island\u2019s residents, fortysomething Silvia makes a modest living harvesting and selling the seaweed deposited on the beach by churning, generous waters. Though she has a partner, Mario (David Gaete), who shares her simple, placid way of life, she has apparently never felt the need for children. Impulsively adopting Yuri as a puppy, however, awakens some level of maternal instinct in her; the two are devoted, until Yuri runs away one New Year\u2019s Eve, seemingly spooked by fireworks. <\/p>\n

\n\tSilvia is bereft, though the loss awakens a deeper, carefully bandaged layer of grief from her past \u2014 cuing a flashback to a formatively upsetting incident for the young Silvia (Rafaella Grimberg, a remarkable match for Oyarz\u00fan, both physically and temperamentally), involving a visiting Brazilian family (headed by \u201cI\u2019m Still Here\u201d star Selton Mello, in a brief, potent turn) and the same coastal cave where she fears Yuri may have disappeared. Sotomayor doesn\u2019t handle flashbacks in conventional fashion: As befits the out-of-time nature of the island, the film can float almost imperceptibly between past and present, with key objects and locations as subtle transition points, conveying the sense of Silvia sometimes living in her memories as actively as she does in her waking life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLa Perra\u2019s\u201d impact is quiet and cumulative, but it lingers. It\u2019s not a film of clear-cut revelations and changes of heart, but its understanding and appreciation of female solitude \u2014 even the kind that comes nested in companionship \u2014 is honest and delicately nuanced, and should resonate with viewers patient enough to grapple with the film\u2019s ellipses and tough-minded emotional breaks. The calm assurance of Sotomayor\u2019s filmmaking, meanwhile, impresses as much as in her earlier works, well served by the fluid, muscular expansiveness of Simone D\u2019Arcangelo\u2019s cinematography and Federico Rotstein\u2019s freely intuitive editing \u2014 all parties working in tandem to convey lives and landscapes at once turbulent and still, isolated and in soulful dialogue with one another.<\/p>\n

Read more Inside the Explosive \u2018Summer House\u2019 Finale That Changes Everything<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\t\t\u2018La Perra\u2019 Review: Dominga Sotomayor Shores Up Her Reputation With an Elegant, Unsentimental Story of Trauma and Healing<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\t\tReviewed at Soho Screening Rooms, London, May 7, 2026. In Cannes Film Festival (Directors’ Fortnight). Running time: 113 MIN.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

    \n
  • \nProduction:<\/strong>
    \n(Chile-Brazil) An RT Features, Planta production. (World sales: Lucky Number, Paris.) Producers: Rodrigo Teixeira, Fernando Bascu\u00f1\u00e1n, Berta Marchiori. Executive producers: Nicol\u00e1s San Mart\u00edn, Selton Mello, Fernando Fuentes.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nCrew:<\/strong>
    \nDirector: Dominga Sotomayor. Screenplay: Sotomayor, In\u00e9s Bortagaray, based on the novel by Pilar Quintana. Camera: Simone D\u2019Arcangelo. Editor: Federico Rotstein. Music: Clint Mansell.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nWith:<\/strong>
    \nManuela Oyarz\u00fan, David Gaete, Selton Mello, Paula Luchsinger, Paula Dinamarca, Rafaella Grimberg. (Spanish, Portuguese dialogue) \t\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    An independent-minded woman adopts an adorably roguish pup in Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor’s elliptical, bittersweet new film ‘La Perra.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,70,334],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-dominga-sotomayor","tag-la-perra-2"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018La Perra\u2019 Review: Dominga Sotomayor Shores Up Her Reputation With an Elegant, Unsentimental Story of Trauma and Healing - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=295\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018La Perra\u2019 Review: Dominga Sotomayor Shores Up Her Reputation With an Elegant, Unsentimental Story of Trauma and Healing - 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