Amores Perros (Love's a Bitch)

Released 2000
Stars Emilio Echevarría, Gael García Bernal, Goya Toledo, Álvaro Guerrero, Vanessa Bauche, Jorge Salinas, Marco Pérez, Rodrigo Murray
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Amores Perros is a bold, intensely emotional, and ambitious story of lives that collide in a Mexico City car crash. Inventively structured as a triptych of overlapping and intersecting narratives, Amores Perros explores the lives of disparate characters who are catapulted into unforeseen dramatic situations instigated by the seemingly inconsequential destiny of a dog named Cofi.

In "Octavio and Susana," Cofi's teenage owner enters his dog into the brutal world of dog fighting to raise money for his elopement with his brother's young and appealing wife. Cofi's near-fatal injury prompts a reckless car chase that ends abruptly and violently. In "Daniel and Valeria," a middle-aged businessman discovers that dreams can become nightmares after he abandons his family to set up housekeeping with a beautiful young model who is tragically transformed by the crash. Finally, in "El Chivo and Maru," a revolutionary-turned-assassin witnesses the accident and finds that it leads him to an unexpected and life-altering moral epiphany.

A powerful and profound story of love, loss, retribution and redemption, Amores Perros raises provocative questions about the human condition at the same time that the film daringly recapitulates and reinvents different styles of Latin cinema. The result is a vivid and intricate mosaic of classic themes rendered in original -- and unforgettable ways.

Summary from www.netflix.com

I think this is a movie you could watch several times and appreciate it more each time. It's an odd statement, because there isn't a sympathetic character in it. Often this will turn me off because I don't enjoy spending 2 (in this case 2 1/2) hours in the company of loathsome people, but this is a very interesting and gripping film. Also, the characters aren't loathsome; they're just not sympathetic. They're not all ugly criminals doing reprehensible things, but a group of people trying to make the best of their misery. At times things were a little over the top, but overall it all felt real.

When the film opened I immediately thought of Pulp Fiction. While that's an obvious comparison, there are big differences. "Amores Perros" doesn't pop back and forth through time like Quentin's seminal (you just have to say seminal once in awhile) film. Instead it uses the horrific car crash to tie the three stories together. It then pops back to the beginning of each story and follows it through the crash. What really makes it work is how the characters pop up in the different stories just often enough to tie it all into one package. This is a great film. --Bill Alward, January 16, 2002

KISS sighting: in Octavio's room, he has the Playboy spread of KISS with the girls in makeup on his wall.