Review: El Perro

Like Intimate Stories, one could say that the film’s message is the oldest one in the world: all you need is love.

El Perro
Photo: Cinema Tropical

The jewel in the crown of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Latin Beat program last year was Carlos Sorin’s El Perro, which grabs the warm humanist baton from the director’s Intimate Stories and heads straight for an existential finish line. With tender understatement, Sorin catalogs the depressing embarrassments an unemployed mechanic (Juan Villegas) is subjected to when he’s unable to secure work or earn money for his homemade knives. In spite of how little the world offers him, the man still chooses to give back: After aiding a woman stranded far from home, he is rewarded with a majestic white dog he and a colleague take to the dog show circuit. In Juan’s obsession with clocks and Villega’s disillusioned gaze, Sorin evokes a powerful sense of life in stop motion, with a bombshell of a sex scene revealing itself as a powerful and amusing affront to conformity. Like Intimate Stories, one could say that the film’s message is the oldest one in the world: all you need is love. Given Sorin’s already remarkable track record, let’s hope he’ll be allowed to sound off from the New York Film Festival big table one day.

Score: 
 Cast: Juan Villegas, Walter Donado, Gregorio, Rosa Valsecchi, Mariela Díaz, Sabino Morales, Sabino, Claudina Fazzini, Kita Ca, Carlos Rossi, Leda Cacho, Micol Estévez, Diego Rozas Denis, Andrea Suárez, Adrián Giampani, Carlos Aguirre  Director: Carlos Sorin  Screenwriter: Santiago Calori, Salvador Roselli, Carlos Sorin  Distributor: Cinema Tropical  Running Time: 96 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2005  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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