Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu certainly set himself ambitious goals for his debut film Amores Perros, released in 2000, especially considering that his prior professional experience had been mostly as a disc jockey. It is an admirable effort in many respects, with a creative structure, characters that are anything but hackneyed, and plenty of energy. It is only lacking in emotional depth and one can certainly hope that Iñárritu will be able to add that element as he matures as a filmmaker. His first effort clearly bodes well for his future. Iñárritu has crafted a creative non-linear and tripartite structure for his exposition. The film begins smack dab in the center of his story and then fills in both the previous and subsequent events. There are three separate parts to the story loosely connected by the opening central event.

The Story: The linking event that comprises the center of the story is an automobile chase and shoot-out through the crowded streets of Mexico City, culminating in a car crash that involves characters from all three segments of the film. The first story, entitled “Octavio and Susana”, then begins as a flashback. Octavio (Gael García Bernal) is a young man from a lower class family. He is in love with his older brother’s wife, Susana (Vanessa Bauche). Since the whole family lives together in a tiny flat, the situation is fraught with potential for jealousy, both for Octavio and for his brother, Ramiro (Marco Pérez). Ramiro treats Susana badly and provides her with little help with their infant. Ramiro works in a grocery store and supplements that meager income by robbing convenience stores. Susana is a generally tender but shallow young woman and vacillates between encouraging and rejecting Octavio’s advances. Octavio hopes to save enough money so they can run off to Ciudad Juarez, but has little in the way of employment prospects. Octavio has a tough dog named Cofi and decides to give him a shot at the dog fights. Cofi proves to be a real winner and Octavio see his opportunity for some quick money. Cofi defeats the dog of one of Octavio’s street rivals, but the enraged loser shoots Cofi. Octavio loads his dog in his car and just before leaving to get him medical attention, stabs Cofi’s assailant, leading to the car chase seen at the film’s opening.

The second story is entitled “Daniel and Valeria.” Daniel (Álvaro Guerrero) is an affluent magazine publisher who has decided to leave his wife and two children to live with a gorgeous young model, Valeria (Goya Toledo). He buys her a posh apartment situated right across the road from a billboard that sports her enormous image. Valeria, however, is badly injured in the car crash featured at the beginning of the film. Her career as well as her psyche have been obliterated. Adding insult to injury, Valeria’s pampered little puppy climbs into a hole in the floor of her new apartment and somehow gets lost and will not or cannot come when called. One thing leads to another, Valeria has to have a leg amputated, and is now both emotionally and physically crippled. Daniel’s trophy gal no longer seems such a prize and the wife and family that he walked out on are suddenly looking a whole lot more appealing.

The third story is, perhaps, the most complex. It is entitled “El Chivo and Maru.” Chivo (Emilio Echevarría) means “The Goat.” Chivo is a scraggly, bearded, homeless man who wanders the city streets collecting junk and stray dogs. He lives in an abandoned old building with his menagerie of mangy mutts. Chivo, too, is at the scene of the car crash and rescues the wounded Cofi from the back seat of the wrecked car. Chivo takes Cofi back to his dwelling and nurses him back to life. Chivo, we soon learn, left his family many years ago because he was committed to some radical political cause. When he was arrested and sent to prison, he told his wife to get on with her life and to tell their young daughter that he had died. Once released from prison, Chivo had become a homeless vagrant and had kept his distance from his former family – until, he read, by chance, in the newspaper of the funeral of his former wife. He decides to observe the burial at the cemetery from a distance and spies his now adult daughter, Maru. He begins to spy on her, though only for the purpose of observing her and the life she leads. Chivo is also a hitman, it seems, taking contracts from a dirty cop. He is given a contract by a man to kill his business partner and half-brother. This plot gets developed and tied up in a rather interesting way.

Themes: The foremost theme in Amores Perros is what is implied in the title of the film, which, translated into English, means approximately, “Love’s a bitch!” There’s an obvious pun, there. One meaning is that love is difficult to achieve and maintain in practice and the second meaning is that pets, such as female dogs, provide us with simple, straight-forward, unassuming loyalty and affection as well as providing objects for human affection. As to the first of those meanings, all three of the lead male characters in the three sections of the film, Octavio, Daniel, and El Chivo, have both already betrayed a person or persons that they ought to have loved and are in the process of failing in an attempt at love once again. Octavio has betrayed his brother, and to a lesser extent his mother, by seeking to run off with Susana. He is not really authentically loved by Susana. She is merely flattered by his attention and sees him as a possible out if her relationship with Ramiro gets too ugly or if Ramiro rejects her when he discovers that she is pregnant. Daniel has betrayed his wife and children for the allure of a trophy woman but Valeria is too full of herself and self-centered to genuinely love Daniel. She appears to love her dog more than Daniel. El Chivo betrayed his wife and infant daughter when he abandoned them for revolutionary activity. Now, when he has the theoretical possibility of reestablishing a connection with his adult daughter, he must again abandon her because of his activities as a hitman. These are all men for whom love is more of a challenge than they can handle. It doesn’t help that all three have set as targets for their love young women who exhibit no genuine reciprocity of that love for one reason or another.

Dogs play a prominent role in all three stories. Each story has a character that is very fond of one or more dogs – Octavio, Valeria, and El Chivo. The dogs depend on these three characters and, in return, give them their loyalty and affection (which is love as dogs know it). Yet all three of the dog lovers fail, in the end, to protect their beloved pets. Octavio exploits Cofi and subjects him to the risk of injury either from the other dogs the he fights or, as it happens, their owners. Valeria fails to protect her pooch from getting lost under the floor boards. El Chivo’s mangy brood is slaughtered by his latest reclamation project – Cofi. In the end, these folks prove no better in their capacity to love their dogs (in the sense of rendering protection) than in loving other people.

A second theme (or common thread, at least) is the issue of coincidence, fate, and interconnectedness of lives. The most obvious manifestation of this theme is laid out from the beginning by the car accident that binds the three stories together. Beyond that, all three stories involve violence, dogs, young women, betrayal, misguided efforts at love, and Mexico City. Mexico City, in fact, can almost be viewed as another character and the only character fully common among the stories. Iñárritu stated about the film that he wanted to portray Mexico City with all of its contradictions and he has done so. The three stories encompass a full range of social strata of the city, from the wealthy Daniel, to the working class Octavio, to the homeless El Chivo.

Production Values: Amores Perros is a fine film but not a great one. It is not, however, simply mediocre across the board. Its strengths are impressive but are offset by a substantial weakness. On the positive side, Iñárritu has drawn viewers a set of colorful and complex characters, with a full range of human motivations, including love, greed, and hatred. Furthermore, he has added dogs as fully drawn characters that are as important, in their own way, as the humans in the story. Secondly, the casting for the film is generally strong and the performances by Echevarría and Bernal are especially praiseworthy. Both have interesting, piercing eyes. Bernal also played in Y Tu Mamá También (See my review at Y Tu Mamá También) and in El Crimen del Padre Amaro. The remainder of the performances were at least fresh and believable. Thirdly, Amores Perros has plenty of stylishness and kinetic energy. The action scenes (notably the car chase and dog fights) are well choreographed. The first and third segments of the film are certainly exciting enough to keep one’s attention riveted. Though it’s a long film, Iñárritu manages to provide some distinctiveness of style in each of the three sections that helps to stave off boredom. Fourthly, Iñárritu effectively maintains control over his interesting tripartite structure. Lastly among the positives, the cinematography was generally crisp and effective. It was the product of Rodrigo Prieto, who also worked on Frida.

On the negative side of the ledger, none of the characters in this film are especially sympathetic. They lack appeal and are not humanized to an extent that elicits genuine empathy. Consequently, the film lacks an emotional core. One walks away from a viewing having been entertained but wondering where’s the payoff. The film fails to deliver on its strong opening. The stylistic complexity is interesting but for what purpose? There is little relationship between the three segments other than the fact that all three stories are touched by the opening car accident. It feels, in the end, like three short stories published together in a single book because all three stories relate to dogs and share one common event. One is left with the feeling that the three were joined together for no better reason than that none of the three could support a feature length film by itself. Moreover, the middle of the three stories is rather weak and boring. For animal activist groups, another complaint is the repeated depictions of animal brutality, not withstanding the fact that these scenes were fully staged and resulted in no actual injuries to the “animal actors.”

Bottom-Line: Amores Perros deservedly won a variety of film festival awards and garnered a nomination by the Academy in the Best Foreign Film category. It is also a popular film, with something of a cult following on the internet. On the Internet Database Poll of film popularity, it currently ranks 149th, which is 17th highest among foreign films by my count. It is a film with plenty of style and energy as well as significant technical merits but which, in the end, doesn’t add up to much that is meaningful. It is rather long, at 154 minutes. The DVD version has some rather weak extras, including a commentary track in Spanish only, some uninteresting deleted scenes, and a documentary on the staging of the car crash scene and the training of the dogs.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Mexico:

Like Water For Chocolate
Maria Candelaria
Los Olvidados
Y Tu Mamá También

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age