by Alex Billington
May 19, 2026
I’m always on the lookout for dog movies. I will watch each and every one of them. But that also means they better not do anything off-putting or annoying or upsetting. If a dog character is important to the plot in a film, the filmmakers better handle this story (and the dog/all the dogs) with care and concern. Or it will ruin the film. On one hand, this Chilean film is quite beautiful and entrancing. On the other, it’s bogged down by an annoying subplot about grief that overwhelms the film and sends it to a frustrating finale. La Perra is the latest feature from Chilean filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor – it’s premiering at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at the fest. It’s a ravishing cinematic experience – the powerful sound design and astonishing cinematography make it worthwhile to watch on the big screen, which is the proper way to view it. However, the narrative gets bogged down by choices related to this grief theme in the story, and it waters down the otherwise beautiful tale of a woman bonding with a dog on an island. I enjoyed most of, but not the ending… Though I still think it’s worth recommending to other adventurous cinephiles.
La Perra is the fifth feature film so far made by Chilean filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor. It’s written by Inés Bortagaray, based on a story by Pilar Quintana. The title is Spanish for “The Dog” – however, it’s important to note that it’s the Spanish word for a female dog specifically, not a male one. This is obviously especially vital to the story because it’s about a middle-aged woman named Silvia (starring Manuela Oyarzún) living on a remote island off the coast of Chile dealing with her grief (from an incident in the past) and she takes in a female dog who helps her heal. However, it’s also a story of a free spirited doggie who prefers to live on her own terms. The film flips around from being about grief to also being about how both of these woman (the dog and the human) are free spirits with traumatic pasts that prefer to be alone doing their own thing. The latter is the much more interesting & meaningful story, and I wish the filmmakers decided to focus entirely on that and cut out the rest. It’s a vividly cinematic parable and the filmmaking minimalism combined with the super cute doggie and all of the majestic shots of the island are enough to make it all engaging anyway.
I’m so extraordinarily tired of how almost every film nowadays needs to be about or involve grief in some way. It’s often unnecessary and exceptionally cliche, especially when the narrative always ends up at at some generic scene of them overcoming that grief (or at least trying to) with a bland moment of letting go. It’s always the same. La Perra is a beautiful film that offers so much already in the story following Silvia and the friendly stray dog which she names Yuri. But I’m deeply bothered by how it all wraps up. The ending barely makes sense, the final few shots don’t work at all, which is especially frustrating considering how far we’ve come with the rest of the story before. And the whole grief plot device doesn’t really add anything to make the character or the story more interesting, distracting from the beauty of where she lives and works. This doesn’t entirely ruin the film, thank goodness, but it absolutely does take away from the overall impact the film has. Sometimes a simple story of a woman and her dog is all that a film really needs to be affecting and cinematic. Sometimes a quiet life with a cheerful dog by your side is all that’s needed to really feel complete.
Alex’s Cannes 2026 Rating: 6.5 out of 10
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