Amores Perros: DVD & Movie Review (2000)

(Originally published 2000)

In Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s unforgettable film, “Ameros Perros,” the Mexican-born Inarritu, working from a screenplay by novelist Guillermo Arriaga, channels two men--the Spanish director Luis Bunuel and Quentin Tarantino, whose inescapable influence continues to grow in the years following his groundbreaking films, “Resevoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction.”

But in his Academy Award-nominated debut, which, incidentally, lost to Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Inarritu ultimately proves he’s his own man, a gifted director who presents a harrowing, powerful and often disturbing movie about three seemingly unrelated stories that collide after one horrific car accident in Mexico City.

Loosely translated, the film’s title means “Love’s a Bitch,” which is fitting since the film finds its emotional core in its characters’ close relationships with their dogs.

Beginning his film with a disclaimer that suggests no dogs were harmed during the filmming of his movie (that’s often impossible to believe), Inarritu sinks us almost immediately into the violent underworld of dog fights with the story of the Octavio (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his sister-in-law, Susana (Vanessa Bauche), whose sexual attraction becomes their undoing.

As Inarritu shows in one of his film’s several flashbacks, it’s Octavio, on the run from a man who tried to murder his dog, Cofi, whose reckless driving is the cause of the film’s opening car wreck.

The woman he hits, Valeria (Goya Toledo), becomes the source for the film’s second act, “Daniel and Valeria,” in which Valeria, a leggy model, not only must suffer the physical ramifications of the car accident and the loss of her modeling job, but also the disappearance of her treasured dog and the gradual decline of her relationship with Daniel (Alvaro Guerrero).

Fans of Bunuel’s 1970 film, “Tristana,” will see Bunuel’s influence all over this story, but Inarritu nevertheless makes it his own as he eventually connects it to the film’s final act, “El Chivo and Maru.” Here, we follow a terrorist (Emilio Echevarria) tied to the previous two stories in ways that ultimately prove so emotionally devestating, they won’t be revealed here.

Marked by its outstanding performances, its confident direction and its moving stories, “Amores Perros” is an excellent tonic for those tired of mindless dreck.

Grade: A