54. Amores Perros (2000)

The Tarantino effect hits Mexico and produces a similar, but arguably superior, film to 1994's Pulp Fiction. Here, three stories literally collide in a car crash then swing their relative ways. The time line is a lot more linear than that of PF though. They take the form of past, present and future as relative to the crash. Each story also has a theme of loyalty to a dog and disloyalty to a human. The much argued translation of the title also shows this. 'Dog Love' or 'Love's a Bitch' depending on which side of the Mexico/USA border you are translating!

The first story(Past) centres on Octavio who is in love with his brother's wife(Susana) and hates that his brother is constantly ill treating of her. He starts to enter his well hard dog into dog fights and begins to earn a tidy peso from it. He gives this money to Susana and they begin an affair that she seems forced into with the promise they will run away and begin a life together with her child and another on the way, but is this too good to be true?

In the Second story(Present), Daniel has just left his wife and family for the supermodel Valerie. Their new found bliss is cut short as Valerie is involved in a car crash which crushes her leg and leaves her confined to their new apartment with a patronising view of a billboard of her as her old self. Things get worse as her dog gets trapped in the crawl space under the floorboards and they are tormented by his scrabbling around and whimpering, but the can't afford to lift up the floorboards. Can it get worse? You betcha!

The third story(Future) centres on El Chivo: A man who turned his back on his wife and child to become a mercenary. Now dead to his family, he is a dog loving vagrant and occasional hit man. Whilst scoping out a hit, he witnesses the accident and rescues Octavio's injured dog. He makes a decision to get back to his old life somehow and reconnect with his daughter.

Each story is a worthy film in it's own right and the crash connection isn't contrived. It is more the disloyalty theme that links them (Octavio to his brother; Daniel to his wife; El Chivo to his wife and daughter) and how that disloyalty, no matter how seemingly good natured, destroys them. It's basically a tale of karma!

Filmed beautifully, it is a pretty gruesome film and the dogfights particularly are so realistic that the usual disclaimer that no animals were harmed during the filming of this movie, that would usually be buried in the credits, went up at the start of the film. It's only when you see the extras that you see that they are actually just rather rampant animals and they were mostly shagging! It's very clever editing with great use of quick cuts and a shaky camera.

An outstanding first feature from director Alejandro González Iñárritu, but it seems that he has yet to equal with such fare as 21 grams and the abysmal Babel. I hear good things about Biutiful, so perhaps this is not a genius fluke.