Review of Amores Perros (2000) by Albert M — 30 May 2015

This debut feature by director, editor, and producer Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, a TV commercial director, helped establish renewed interest in Mexican cinema and launched the career of a major international talent.

The title translation is Love's A Bitch. Set in Mexico City, it tells three interlocking stories - connected around a gruesome car accident - about violence perpetrated by man and dog. The first segment involves a young man (Gael Garcia Bernal) who wants to use money earned from dog fighting to run away with his sister-in-law (Vanessa Bauche), who he is in love with; the second segment is about a beautiful model (Goya Toledo), incapacitated after being injured in a car accident, and how her relationship with a married man begins to unravel; the final story is about an assassin (Emilio Echevarria), hired by a business man to murder his partner, who begins to regret his life and the loss of the daughter he abandoned.

The violence is graphic but never exploitive - even the dogfights are judiciously edited - and we are always made aware of the consequences. Shot using hand-held cameras with a grainy, slightly bleached out color scheme by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto that gives the locations a seedy reality.

Inarritu overlaps scenes and plays with continuity in a manner that suggests "Pulp Fiction" and "Before the Rain." Written by Guillermo Arriaga. In Spanish with English subtitles.