A rural, obscure community in the east of Uruguay is shacked every year with the arrival of tourists: the annual parade of the wealthy and beautiful. And for men (vast majority of the local population), the warm season of parties, booze, drugs and women. Women that change the "tailleur classic" used in Montevideo and Buenos Aires for their "nouveau hippies" attires. And with the outfit change, the change in manners, being as joyful and liberated in the resort as bitter and conservative in the city.
But what happens when the party is over and the men are left alone in a no women community?. Maybe the answer would be similar as what goes on when you place some cute females caniches in an all male dog pound (la perrera, in Spanish), to take them away in a few days.
Manolo Nieto opera prima tells us the story of young David. Not-so-bright David, spends holidays in La Perrera and studies in Montevideo. But this year will be different: his father won't give him any money to return to Montevideo till he demonstrates he can work, finishing the construction of a house in La Perrera during the cold Uruguayan winter.
Structuring the film around the main character and his story, Nieto provides us with the vision of this sordid community and the way they kill time till the next season.
The characters (at the same time repulsive and funny, innocent and mean), spend the off-season anesthetized with cheap wine and hallucinogenic mushrooms, while providing with some help to David in exchange of booze, pot, and the promise of a visit of David's girlfriend and her female friends.
Although no reference to any film is straightforward for this movie, I was compelled to remember "Deliverance" (John Boorman, 1972) and the community of retarded rednecks, specially when an outsider gay is hunted by locals in La Perrera. The splendid mushroom travel description in the movie (a magnificent use of simple visual resources) also made me think in "Easy Rider" (Dennis Hopper, 1969) and its memorable hallucinogenic drug scene in a graveyard.
This is an excellent movie, awarded in Rotterdam Film Festival with the main award, extreme but real with great performances. The only drawback is the sound, which is not at the same level as the rest of the movie.
