Patagonia's mesmerising effect on creative imaginations has been celebrated since Bruce Chatwin travelled across its vast wasteland. Great sweeping landscapes of stark scrub, cut by lonely highways that could take you to heaven or hell - there is no way of knowing which because the end is never in sight. You can travel days without seeing a soul and when you do they will be with others, huddled against the ceaseless wind and loneliness in scruffy little hamlets of clapboard houses.
In Bombon El Perro, Carlos Sorin's charming not so shaggy dog story about an unemployed mechanic and his dog, the stark Patagonian landscape is as much a character as the actors. Juan Villegas, who plays the mechanic, criss-crosses the Argentine province in his battered truck seeking work, trying to sell the beautiful knives he makes and helping hapless strangers. It is one such offer of help that results in him being rewarded with an Argentine Doggo, the only pedigree dog produced by that country, a great white beast famed for its ferocity and hunting skills.
Before the dog Bombon travelled beside him, Villegas cut a lonely figure, out of sync with the times. This is an Argentina that has lost its macho swagger after the economic collapse Indeed machismo has lost its potency - no wonder women are taking all the jobs. With Bombon beside Villegas his isolation and bad luck ends. His bank manager puts him in touch with Walter Donado, a gifted dog trainer.
Donado persuades Villegas to show Bombon, his eyes beady as he boasts of the fortune in prize winnings and stud fees the dog will earn them. But the plan goes wrong and Bombon goes missing. As the film builds the parallels between Bombon and the impotent Villegas grow stronger and by the end the fortunes of both merge into one.
But gently comic as it is, this is no cutesy dog's tale. Bombon is no beauty and few of the actors are either. Sorin prefers to use real people in his films, though the story is fictional, and these people look like they have lived the lives they portray. Villegas was a car attendant at the lot Sorin uses in Buenos Aires and Donado also plays himself.
Villegas' Buddha-like face exudes a quiet humour and gentleness. He makes a sympathetic, though unlikely hero. There is an authenticity in this tale of poor people struggling to achieve their dreams that will never come from Hollywood, no matter how uglied-up its actors - remember Michelle Pfieffer "doing ugly" in Frankie and Johnny?
The skills of the two leads were once or twice stretched beyond their abilities. It is a minor quibble in a film that is a quiet joy to watch. Bombon, played by a dog called Gregorio, is inscrutable, funny, utterly watchable. The whole film is a warm tale of human redemption and goodness that acts as a welcome antidote to the cynicism and violence of much Hollywood output these days.
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