AMORES PERROS (aka LOVE'S A
BITCH) (18)
D: Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu
Optimum/Zeta Film/Altavista (Alejandro Gonzalez
Iñarritu)
Mexico 🇲🇽 2000
154 mins
Drama
W: Guillermo Arriaga
DP: Rodrigo Prieto
Ed: Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, Luis Carballar &
Fernando Perez Unda
Mus: Gustavo Santaolalla
Emilio Echevarria (El Chivo), Gael Garcia Bernal
(Octavio), Goya Toledo (Valeria), Alvaro Guerrero (Daniel), Vanessa Bauche (Susana), Jorge Salinas (Luis), Marco Perez (Ramiro)
Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu's Amores Perros is right up
there with City Of God (Cidade de Deus) as one of the best foreign language movies of the 21st century.
Whilst City of God was hailed as Brazil's answer to
Goodfellas, Amores Perros has to be considered Mexico's version of Pulp Fiction.
A car accident is the focal point of three different but
interlinked stories, the first of which featuring two feuding brothers, one who robs drugstores for cash, while the other gets involved with a dog-fighting syndicate.
The second story involves a model who was a victim in the
car accident linking the trio of tales. As she learns to adapt to a wheelchair-bound life, her pet dog finds his way stuck underneath the floorboards of her house, unable to escape causing an
argument between the crippled beauty and her lover, who is reluctant to tear up the floorboards to rescue it (it's more interesting than it sounds).
The third story involves a vagrant who looks after stray
dogs, hired to carry out a professional killing, but has a change of heart when he takes in a fighting dog involved in the first of the trio of stories.
The middle of the three stories is the weakest of the
trio, but the first and third installments are absolutely gripping. The dog fighting scenes are quite savage and the direction is flawless. This film is quite simply Mexico's finest
export of the year 2000.
9/10
