Critics reviews

The deceptively simple sound design gives Citarella and Llinás's virtually dialogue-free film not so much an observational feel as a defiant one – the metallic splash of a raindrop against a pan leads to an artificial guitar riff and a basic drum, seemingly out of place in this natural environment.

La mujer de los perros is a quiet experiment of a film that follows a woman who lives in the border of Buenos Aires where the city gives way to nature, forest and loneliness; there she is accompanied by her dogs and we are witness to a year of her life going by. Many plot points are scattered in the movie's 90 minutes, but all of them are discarded in favor of a poetic tone that brings forward the face of Llinás and the nature of her existence.

Veteran actress Verónica Llinás and director Laura Citarella together create a remarkable documentary-style narrative, which dispenses with verbal communication and lets time in all its bluntness pass by gracefully on screen.

Initially, this lovely, low-key Argentine movie suggests a distaff variation on Lisandro Alonso's first feature, "La Libertad." Like the central figure in that minimalist coup, the title character in "Dog Lady" lives or perhaps just exists in a primitive hut in an expansive forest. As this movie progresses, though, it emerges that the directors Laura Citarella and Verónica Llinás are less interested in flexing their cinematic chops and more concerned with solitude, materially and existentially.

[The dog lady's] deliberate, self-assured pace is matched by the rhythm of the film itself. That rhythm is both calming and stimulating, as is the soundtrack, which is almost all diegetic and organic, alive with birdcalls and barks and the tattoo of raindrops on her homemade roof.

Provided you stay to the very end of it, the prolonged closing shot in the remarkable, haunting Dog Lady provides a satisfying gotcha conclusion to its engrossing four-seasons study of its nameless, silent protagonist who lives in self-imposed exile in a makeshift shack in the pampas on the edge of Buenos Aires with only a pack of stray dogs as companions... Dog Lady is filmed with an attentive and undemonstrative eye while neither idealizing or explaining its subject.

This modest but sturdy showcase for veteran actress Veronica Llinas—who co-writes and co-directs with Laura Citarella—intimately chronicles one year in the life of a shack-dwelling middle-aged hermit on Buenos Aires' outer fringes. Bowing and wowing in the main competition at Rotterdam, the likeably low-key picture should enjoy a healthy festival run—even if some viewers may lose patience with the wispiness of its narrative.