Amores Perros Film Overview
The Effect of Inarritu's Debut Film Starring Gael Garcia Bernal
A look back at the 2000 film Amores Perros which brought its director Inarritu and star Bernal to the attention of the world.
Amores Perros was the breakthrough film for director Alejandro González Iñárritu and star Gael García Bernal. Made in 2000, the film is a detail rich study of everyday goings on in Mexico City. The ambiguous title 'Amores Perros' is variously translated as 'Love's a Bitch' or 'Loves Dogs', both of which, cleverly, are underlying themes of the film.
Amores Perros, the Original Crash
Amores Perros takes a portmanteau approach to cinema, presenting 3 separate stories to digest. Originally, Iñárritu and screen writer Guillermo Arriaga wrote 11 short stories about life in Mexico City, before deciding to focus in more depth on the best 3. The different strands are woven together using the framing device of an horrific car crash, but although the crash affects everyone to a degree, there is otherwise no reference or direct contact between them. The characters in each separate episode don't know each other, and don't cross over into each other's stories. This gives the film an oddly truncated feel in parts, which perhaps could have been avoided by incrementally increasing the characters involvement with one another. Paul Haggis managed to effectively achieve this with his satisfyingly rounded film Crash. Made in 2004, Crash shares a basic ideology with Amores Perros, but the sheer scale of Crash forces it into the stratosphere. Nevertheless, Iñárritu's Spanish language film did come first, and taking into account the differences in budget and filming restraints between the two, Amores Perros continues to stand up favourably against its bigger more successful counterpart.
Gael García Bernal – Mesmerising Performance
Prior to Amores Perros, Iñárritu had worked as a DJ, studied film making and had made a few TV adverts – some of which can be spotted playing in the background of Amores Perros. Nevertheless, such an explosive debut film was a massive achievement, defying all expectations. The film may not have been as polished as a Hollywood production, but the ideas behind it were fresh and exciting, garnering much critical acclaim. Furthermore, Amores Perros was also the debut feature film of The Motorcycle Diaries star Gael García Bernal. His performance as lovesick Octavio is subtle, but mesmerising. Octavio features in the first of the three episodes in Amores Perros. He is in love with his bully-boy brother's wife, and dreams of getting enough money together to run away with her. He pursues this dream by working in the brutal world of dog fighting. Iñárritu spares us none of the sickening violence of this hideous sport, although ultimately it's the people in Amores Perros who suffer the most pain.
The Other Episodes
The second episode features a model, Valeria, whose married lover treats her as a trophy wife. Her world begins to crumble around her when she loses her leg in the car crash. This episode has moments that are tragically moving, but it's still probably the least successful fragment of the film as a whole for the simple reason that the story about Valeria's little dog getting stuck under the floorboards fails to convince. Metaphorically this episode is revealing, which would certainly point to the reason for its inclusion, but next to the visceral realism of the rest of the film it falls down.
The third episode is about El Chivo, a tramp who looks after stray dogs. El Chivo longs to talk to his daughter Maru, but his haunting, violent past has built a barrier between them. With near perfect performances from real life father and daughter Emilio Echevarría and Lourdes Echevarría, this segment forms a perceptive and dramatic end to the film.
Alejandro González Iñárritu went on to make 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006). He is currently working on pre-production for an as yet unnamed project in Barcelona. Gael García Bernal went on to star in Y tu Mamá También (2001), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) and Babel (2006). His new-found fame was further emphasized by an unavoidably public relationship with the movie star Natalie Portman. He is currently working on a Jim Jarmusch film called The Limits of Control.
