“Amores Perros” is a wildly spinning top of a movie: one of the freshest, most hard-hitting, most mind-blowing films to hit the big screen in a while — foreign language or not. It expertly weaves the lives of down-and-outers in Mexico City together with a series of three stories ala “Pulp Fiction” or Doug Liman’s “Go.” While comparisons to those films are inevitable, “Amores Perros” is still a different movie, tapping a different well to draw its appeal. It is not only a gripping character study, but also a no-frills portrait of raw humanity, using a running metaphor of dogs and making truth of the notion that it really is a “dog-eat-dog world.”
The film’s director, a first time helmer named Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, pays direct homage to Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” with an opening shot involving a nasty car accident after a car chase between two down-on-their-luck ne’er do wells and the bookies that want payment from them in blood. From there we segue into three different stories titled, in Tarantino fashion, by the names of their respective protagonists, all who have some involvement to what went into that car crash centerpiece. The title of the movie, which is loosely translated as “Love’s a Bitch,” is ever-present, as dogs play an integral role in each of the three vignettes.
Our first look is at young, troubled Octavio (Gael Garcia Bernal), who lives in a cramped heights abode with his mother (Adriana Barraza), his narcisstic and abusive older brother, Ramiro (Marco Perez), and Ramiro’s doormat wife Susana (Vanessa Bauche). Believing he is the better man for Susana, Octavio gets involved in a back-lot dog fighting ring, after the family dog proves its fighting ability in a spontaneous street altercation. Octavio and Susana plunge headlong into a torrid affair, and Octavio plans their escape with the money he keeps winning from his prized dog. But nothing ever goes as planned for these young rebels, and soon Octavio finds himself up to his ears in trouble, both at home and from his creditors and competitors.
The second vignette concerns Valeria (Goya Toledo) a model-turned-invalid after the car accident leaves her paralyzed and without a job. The billboard across the street from her swank apartment featuring her best work ever, is a constant reminder of what once was and will never be again — just one of many excellent visual symbols used in the film. Her tortured husband Daniel (Alvaro Guerrero) spends his time caring for her and tries to meet her every need, while battling his personal guilt over having left his wife and children for Valeria in a relationship hatched in infidelity. The centerpiece of the story is, again, a pet dog, named Richie, who is ill-fated like his owners.
Finally we meet the most complex “love dog” of them all, the homeless wanderer named El Chivo, or “The Goat” (the great Emilio Echeverria), who moonlights as a hitman and is by day a dog lover and protector. El Chivo is connected to every other character in the film, by blood, by employment or by chance, and is somewhat of a central figurehead for each individual story and thus for the whole film. His own personal transformation makes for the film’s last and most poignant half hour, leaving the viewer open to interpretation and mystified, yet entirely satisfied at the same time. Again, the images of the dog and the “dog eat dog” world of humans are constant.
While all this at times seems just like yet another attempt to duplicate Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” success, “Amores Perros” expertly does three things: it acknowledges its source material, pays homage to it, and then dives in from a different and innovative angle. While “Pulp Fiction” is larger-than-life, making caricatures and pop culture personalities out of its characters, “Amores Perros” is completely down-and-dirty, giving us not a single pure character, and blindsiding us with hard-hitting realism and the sad reality of humanity.
“Amores Perros” was Mexico’s Academy award bid for 2000, and made it into the final five for the category this past March. Although it lost to heavyweight “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” hopefully the passage of time will reveal that it is, in fact, the better film. A standing and profound achievement in so many aspects of filmmaking, “Amores Perros” is and will most likely remain one of the best films of 2001.
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