May 20, 2026 12:22am PT

‘La Perra’ Review: Dominga Sotomayor Shores Up Her Reputation With an Elegant, Unsentimental Story of Trauma and Healing

An independent-minded woman adopts an adorably roguish pup in the Chilean director's latest feature, but anyone expecting a standard canine-bonding heartwarmer will be taken off guard by the elliptical, bittersweet result.

Guy Lodge

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Guy Lodge

Film Critic

@guylodge

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Courtesy of Lucky Number

Flames ripple across the tide in a jagged rockpool near the shore of the lonesome, wind-whipped Chilean island that houses “La Perra“: a film often content to surrender to the elements, though rarely in quite such unexpected combination. As it turns out, there’s a rational explanation for this flammable water — years ago, a gas pipeline burst on that spot, making for something of a famed local curiosity — but it’s an aptly uncanny image in Chilean writer-director Dominga Sotomayor‘s arresting, intriguing new film. A portrait of independent womanhood in unforgiving surrounds, “La Perra” trades heavily in matters that resist easy explanation, from an unresolved mystery of disappearance in the protagonist’s past, to the unknowable mind of her wayward dog.

'La Perra' Review: Dominga Sotomayor Shores Up Her Reputation With an Elegant, Unsentimental Story of Trauma and Healing