[REVIEW] Cachorro

[rfmcdonald]

Last night, I watched the Spanish film Cachorro with a worthy crew at last night's birthday celebrations. This film--Spanish-language homepage here--has managed to get a fair bit of attention since its release (see the New York Times review here, read this article on the making of Cachorro from The Advocate here). The basic plot, of a gay dentist (Pedro) living in Madrid who's left to raise his nine-year-old nephew (Bernardo) once the boy's mother is arrested in India for drug possession and his estranged paternal grandmother (Violeta) tries to intrude, is interesting enough. Certainly, the first half of the movie developed quickly enough.

It's a sad irony that, earlier that evening, I was talking with vaneramos and danthered about how difficult it is for fiction writers to avoid the temptation to resolve everything in a final chapter. Lucky is the writer who can do that without coming off as lazy; lucky, too, the writer who can come up with legitimate excuses to leave ends tangled. Cachorro's writers chose to ignore serious issues untouched. What sort of relationship does Violeta develop with Bernardo and Pedro? How do Pedro and Bernardo sustain their relationship? Where does Manuel go? I'd go into more detail, happily, save that I don't want to spoil the movie. Suffice to say that after a strong first half, I feel about as cheated as the Sex Pistols' audience in the Winterland ballroom.