MAN'S BEST FRIEND AT HIS BEST

Reviewed - Bombon El Perro: The Argentinian director Carlos Sorín, whose 2003 portmanteau movie Historias Minimas did such interesting things with Patagonia, has an enviable gift for locating and photographing interesting faces.

There are two such visages in the slight but delightful Bombón el Perro. One - sweet, sad, resigned - belongs to Juan Villegas, who was originally the director's car parker. The other - stubborn, resilient, impassive - can be found upon the blunt head of Gregorio, a pedigree mutt of the breed known as Dogo Argentino. So successfully do Gregorio and Juan work together that Sorín can induce feelings of surprising wellbeing simply by arranging for them to sit beside one another in Juan's beaten-up old van.

Villegas appears as a middle-aged man who, one of many victims of Argentina's annihilated economy, is reduced to selling handmade knives after losing his job in a petrol station. One day, in repayment for helping out a stranger with a broken fan belt, he is given a pedigree show dog, played, with scene-stealing charm, by young Gregorio.

After some misadventures, the two new friends meet up with Walter (Walter Donado), a breeder and trainer, and they all embark on the exhibition circuit. Everything seems to be going nicely when, to their horror, the humans discover that the dog, potentially a valuable progenitor of little Dogos, has no interest in the bitches. This is as close to tragedy as we come in this gratifyingly good-spirited picture.

Featuring a gorgeous score by the director's son, Nicolas Sorín, Bombón el Perro never gets above the pace of an elderly Bassett with a full stomach. But Sorín Sr, who pushes his camera closer to the face than any director since Sergio Leone, contrives to find something of interest in every shot. The moving final scenes, in which a rare crisis is satisfactorily resolved, are characteristic of the film's optimistic humanism. Or do I mean dogism?

Donald Clarke