One of the most exciting filmmaking talents to come out of Mexico in the 21st century has been Alejandro González Iñárritu. He had an incredible surge in his career during the 2010s directing two of the decade’s best films, two films that showed his ability to craft both brazenly original and startlingly brutal stories: 2014’s Birdman and 2015’s The Revenant (both of which took home multiple Academy Awards). While these two films may have garnered him more mainstream attention, before them, he had already had a storied career, with highly acclaimed outings like 21 Grams and Babel.
One such example of his early success would actually be his debut feature, Amores perros (or Love’s a Bitch in English). After working throughout the ’80s and ’90s in radio, music, and television, Iñárritu made the jump to the big screen in 2000, with a film that not only helped to launch his directing career, but remains one of the most frenetic and at times vicious films of the new millennium. Amores perros is now streaming on Prime Video, and is more than worth a watch.
What Is ‘Amores Perros’ about?
Amores perros is a triptych story, meaning that it has three individual stories about separate characters that are all loosely connected by one central incident. The first story follows Octavio (played by now-beloved Mexican actor Gael García Bernal in his feature film debut) as he navigates the underground dog-fighting world of Mexico City while romantically pursuing his brother’s wife Susana. The second story follows a model, Valeria, as she deals with the effects of a car accident (as well as her dog going missing under the floorboards of her boyfriend’s apartment), while the third story centers around a drifter on the streets who takes in stray dogs, and who turns out to have more to him than initially meets the eye.
While each of these stories has their own twists and turns, high and lows for the characters involved, the differences in the characters’ financial situations are no coincidence, and those differences are made more apparent by all three stories taking place in the same city. The slight intersection of their stories highlights the comparisons that Iñárritu wants the viewer to draw between the characters’ worlds. Class differences are of extensive thematic importance to Iñárritu in this film, seen not only in the contrast between the stories’ settings themselves but also within the individual stories. For example, the final story finds the drifter’s life intertwined with upper-class business professionals in ways that invites the audience to draw more comparisons, in addition to the backstory the viewer learns about the drifter. As important as these themes of economic disparities are, though, they are only some of the film’s concerns, with some others being expressed more symbolically.
Why Dogs Are So Symbolically Important in ‘Amores Perros’
Besides all of the stories being set in Mexico City, another piece of connective tissue between the three stories is the heavy involvement of dogs in each. The first story sees Octavio using his dog to make it big in some of the seedier corners of Mexico City. Valeria’s dog disappears into the floor and becomes a source of growing frustration (bordering on madness). While the drifter takes in strays off the streets and allows them into his family of canines. Dogs are traditionally symbols of loyalty and of unconditional love, and the film uses this association to its advantage, often in an ironic way. Take for example the first story, a story not only about Octavio exploiting his dog violently for his own gain, but also his turmoil at home with the complicated relationship between him and his brother’s wife — a story that invites questions about his loyalty to his family, as well as his brother’s loyalty and love for his wife given that he is an abusive husband. The second story also features themes of infidelity, again, ironically juxtaposed to the idealized loyalty of the ever-present dogs.
Beyond this, the characters’ relationships with the dogs also reflect on their mental states and their arcs. There is the aforementioned Octavio story, but in the Valeria story, the dog’s disappearance under the floor — the animal seemingly being within reach but yet being impossible to get to — can also work as additional commentary on Valeria’s mental state, as the injuries from the car accident have altered her appearance and her modeling career seems to be slipping away before her eyes. This exacerbates problems in her relationship, and her increasingly frantic and desperate attempts to rescue her dog lead to more tension between her and her boyfriend, which in turn adds to her depression. It is a vicious post-accident self-hating cycle that the missing dog aspect helps to highlight. The final story is also interesting when considering the canine angle, as it is largely a story about confronting failures and earning redemption, and in this story the central character clearly treats the dogs well and shows true compassion for them, a compassion he perhaps has lacked in other areas of his life. This leads him to a humanity that he perhaps is attempting to regain, or at least catch glimpses of again.
How ‘Amores Perros’ Influenced Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Career
Amores perros didn’t only kick off Iñárritu’s directing career with a bang, but it set up certain stylistic, tonal, and thematic motifs that would carry throughout his career, including his most mainstream films in Birdman and The Revenant. Some of the dog fighting sequences in Amores perros are going to be quite difficult to watch for some viewers as a result of Iñárritu’s very clever, yet disturbing, ways of conveying the horrific violence of dog fighting without ever showing anything too graphic too directly. This idea of the ferocious aspect of nature, particularly while being either observed or experienced by humans, is of course seen throughout The Revenant, particularly in the infamous bear mauling scene.
Beyond this, themes that are present in the second and particularly third story can also be found in the likes of Birdman, where ideas of life passing one by before one’s eyes, the possible maddening effect this can have on a person, and a search for redemption, particularly in the face of failings in one’s family life, all re-appear. Parallels can be drawn between Riggan Thomson’s (Michael Keaton) journey throughout that film, and specifically his relationship with his daughter Sam (Emma Stone), to Amores perros as well, which features multiple complicated family relationship problems that there are no easy solutions for.
Amores perros translates to Love’s a Bitch, and the wordplay in that title reflects the cleverness of a film that combines brutality and a somewhat pessimistic tone with a sense of humor and realness about human relationships. Its exploration of class differences in Mexico and of how we treat those that we love (or are meant to love) is complex and fascinating, and makes for a wonderful tale of both falls and redemption. It is without a doubt one of the most impressive directorial debuts by any director.
Amores perros is currently streaming on Prime Video in the U.S.
Source link
