Amores Perros

Amores Perros (2000)

Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Amores Perros traces three seemingly disparate narratives that take place in Mexico City. All of these converge, in one way or another, with a brutal, well-executed car crash that is initially shown in the film's opening sequence. But the element that ties them all together is the presence of dogs. This may sound like a strange device, and the narratives unfortunately do not gel together as well as they should, but it is certainly a different approach.

The first part of the film follows Octavio (Gael Bernal), whose family is essentially falling apart. His mother is an insensitive jerk and his brother, Ramiro (Marco Perez), is a violent bully who works as a cashier at a Wal-Mart-like store and whose favorite pastime is robbing banks. He is also married to Octavio's longtime crush, Susana, though I fail to see what he exactly sees in her. Susana gets some sympathy from the audience because she is constantly abused by her husband, but she interacts with Octavio in such a frustratingly aloof manner that it suggests a vacuous intellect which extends far beyond an upbringing that emphasizes utmost loyalty to her husband. This reflects a larger problem with the film as there is a lack of compelling and well-written female characters.

Because without a strong love interest, Octavio's plot to use the deceptively benign family dog, Cofi, to win bets at brutal dog fights in order to run away with Susana loses much of its impact. It also doesn't help that Octavio's main rival is a boring, overplayed villain whose brutal attacks on innocent dogs feels superfluous. Complications arise: Ramiro runs away with Susana and Octavio's fight with his rival doesn't go as planned, leading to a repeated showing, this time not as effective as the first viewing, of the opening car crash.

Octavio's car hits that of a popular model named Valeria (Goya Toledo) who has been having an extramarital affair with a rich man named Daniel. She survives, but a severe injury to her leg leaves her immobile for a couple months - it is bad timing as Daniel has just left his wife and moved into a new loft with the model. Valeria's first immobile day in the loft starts off disastrously. She is passing the time by throwing a ball to her little dog when, upon accidentally tossing the ball into a hole in the floor, the dog jumps in and never emerges.

This is all too much for Valeria; she becomes irritable and gets in fights with Daniel. That the couple almost breaks up because of something so frivolous as a stupid dog disappearing feels extremely forced and provides many moments of unintentional laughter. Of course, that is the point of this narrative - how people place so much value on certain objects so as to render their lives superficial and meaningless. But this doesn't work well because the film doesn't allow the audience to care about the character; it treats her, from the first time she is introduced to us, as someone who does not merit respect. Why, then, should the audience care for her and her dilemma? The end of the sequence, where she takes a sad look at the huge, empty sign where her poster used to be - she had been out of the modeling business for too long - feels like it has been done before; it is not an original or effective approach to relaying her sense of loss.

The final thread follows El Chivo (Emilio Echevarria), a homeless criminal-in-retirement who is occasionally hired by corrupt police officers and civilians to carry out hit jobs. El Chivo, who provides a makeshift sanctuary for injured dogs, finds that he cannot carry out his latest job because his target is going out with his daughter, who has been told by her mother that her father has been dead all these years. He revolts against his clients and instead seeks to re-establish a connection with his daughter. The ending of this narrative is rather poignant, although I find that the dogs, some of whom are killed in a brutal manner, are used by the filmmakers as tools that exploit audience sympathy, rather than as a theme that helps to unite this narrative with the other two.

Despite many narrative weaknesses, the film does manage to convey the grittiness of these characters' lives. The cinematography and editing are presented in a "fast-and-dirty" manner that is both aesthetically pleasing and thematically important considering how these people live in a kinetic environment that requires them to to make decisions on the fly. These narratives, some more effectively than others, convey some sense of the despair that these sad people feel when they regret lost opportunities and outcomes that have failed to turn out in their favor.

Rating: 5.5

First Viewed: 5/9/08

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