Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Los Reyes: Dog days and nights

That stuff is thoroughly human

Los Reyes: It’s a dog’s life.
Los Reyes: It’s a dog’s life.

There are two real dogs behind the canine stars of Los Reyes; their names are Football and Chola, and they really do spend their days (and nights) hanging around the titular skate park — the oldest one in Santiago, Chile. But directors Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff aren’t making a documentary, however grounded their world. The dogs here are characters; not so much stray dogs as sentries, inhuman observers of human folly. (For one thing, they look great, with none of the stray’s matted mange; for another, they are never shown scavenging and begging for food.) And since their real-life counterparts aren’t named until the end of the film, I came to know them as Big and Red.

Sponsored
Sponsored

Big is the obvious alpha, a solid, dark Labrador sort of dog with a deep fondness for balls, especially tennis balls. He frequently makes a game out of nosing a ball close to the skate bowl’s rim, then snatching it before it drops out of reach. Sometimes, it gets away from him; when it does, it’s Red who goes down after it. Red’s more of a Shepherd in appearance, though he’s less inclined to chase passing mopeds and donkeys, and more inclined to let loose his hoarse, whiny bark — at least, when his mouth isn’t closed around a rock, or a plastic bottle, or a crumpled can of Coke. The way a retriever might.

Big and Red live a dog’s life at Los Reyes: laying and lolling about, panting and playing and occasionally getting a little attention from the park’s human visitors. And while the dogs are the stars, it’s those humans who drive the narrative, largely through off-camera conversations, their subtitled chatter superimposed over images of the animals. Funnily enough, one of those visitors refers to the world of daily work and steady paychecks as “a dog’s life,” when nothing could be further from the truth. That stuff is thoroughly human, however wretched it seems to the people in question.

Those people are mostly young men — or rather, boys dreaming they are young men. They make plans for their brilliant futures in the cannabis industry even as their mother’s boyfriends punish them for sleeping in, as their grandmothers call them nasty names, as their mothers try to get them into rehab. They go into business with the world, only to have the world give them the business: mean cops, crooked customers, etc. They posture and threaten, boast and whine, and while away their youth atop their boards. It’s a masterful portrait of societal breakdown and masculine drift, approached in sly and sidelong fashion: as background to the peaceful days of Big and Red, happy mammals who never give thought to the approaching and encircling flies.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Nation’s sexy soldiers stage protest at Pendleton in wake of change in Marine uniform policy

Semper WHY?
Los Reyes: It’s a dog’s life.
Los Reyes: It’s a dog’s life.

There are two real dogs behind the canine stars of Los Reyes; their names are Football and Chola, and they really do spend their days (and nights) hanging around the titular skate park — the oldest one in Santiago, Chile. But directors Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff aren’t making a documentary, however grounded their world. The dogs here are characters; not so much stray dogs as sentries, inhuman observers of human folly. (For one thing, they look great, with none of the stray’s matted mange; for another, they are never shown scavenging and begging for food.) And since their real-life counterparts aren’t named until the end of the film, I came to know them as Big and Red.

Sponsored
Sponsored

Big is the obvious alpha, a solid, dark Labrador sort of dog with a deep fondness for balls, especially tennis balls. He frequently makes a game out of nosing a ball close to the skate bowl’s rim, then snatching it before it drops out of reach. Sometimes, it gets away from him; when it does, it’s Red who goes down after it. Red’s more of a Shepherd in appearance, though he’s less inclined to chase passing mopeds and donkeys, and more inclined to let loose his hoarse, whiny bark — at least, when his mouth isn’t closed around a rock, or a plastic bottle, or a crumpled can of Coke. The way a retriever might.

Big and Red live a dog’s life at Los Reyes: laying and lolling about, panting and playing and occasionally getting a little attention from the park’s human visitors. And while the dogs are the stars, it’s those humans who drive the narrative, largely through off-camera conversations, their subtitled chatter superimposed over images of the animals. Funnily enough, one of those visitors refers to the world of daily work and steady paychecks as “a dog’s life,” when nothing could be further from the truth. That stuff is thoroughly human, however wretched it seems to the people in question.

Those people are mostly young men — or rather, boys dreaming they are young men. They make plans for their brilliant futures in the cannabis industry even as their mother’s boyfriends punish them for sleeping in, as their grandmothers call them nasty names, as their mothers try to get them into rehab. They go into business with the world, only to have the world give them the business: mean cops, crooked customers, etc. They posture and threaten, boast and whine, and while away their youth atop their boards. It’s a masterful portrait of societal breakdown and masculine drift, approached in sly and sidelong fashion: as background to the peaceful days of Big and Red, happy mammals who never give thought to the approaching and encircling flies.

Comments
Sponsored
Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Flowering pear trees in Kensington not that nice

Empty dirt plots in front of Ken Cinema
Next Article

Melissa Etheridge, The Imaginary Amazon

Events April 1-April 3, 2024
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.