Amores Perros

I purchased this - mainly out of curiosity - to see what exactly was so amazing about this film "Amores Perros" (otherwise translated to Love's a Bitch), that has been labelled as possibly the best Mexican film of all time. It was the first movie I had watched by the up and coming director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, so unfortunately I had none of his other works to compare to; however, I had to start somewhere and I thought I might as well watch this before "Babel".

The film is a tragic love tale, orientated around a horrific car accident, which connects three stories, each involving characters dealing with loss, regret, and life's harsh realities; all in the name of love. Like "Children of Men", this movie is typical in that it carries the Mexican trademark of being extremely gritty and realistic - this, I felt, was a good trait as the style fitted in really nicely with the narrative.

The first story focuses around a character named Octavio who is madly in love with his brother's wife. There is a clear contrast between the two brothers - Octavio is portrayed as the more caring yet ambitious one - and his brother is shown as the selfish and abusive husband. As an audience we really feel for Octavio and connect with him very deeply. Rising actor Gael Garcia Bernal does indeed do a very good job in winning the audience's sympathy as the unrequitted lover. He is a very likeable character - I had only seen him once before in "The Motorcycle Diaries" (another Spanish film) - however, he seems to have certainly built himself up a good reputation in the world film industries, and I definately hope to look more into the development of his career, as this was the film which launched it.

Once the film reaches its second story, the atmosphere completely changes - the storyline becomes quite confusing and at the time it did take me a little while to establish what was going on. After seeing the first story, I found the jump to the second one quite tough to adapt to as we suddenly go from having connected really well to a group of characters, to having to start from scratch again. It takes a while to get going, however, it does become interesting once we start to notice the recurring theme of tragic romance.

The film's final part brings it back on track again and this time we are drawn to an older character named El Chivo who is homeless and living with a pack of dogs. His care for the dogs is really iconic of the film itself as they have been dominant features themselves throughout. In fact they leave a clever message on the story; the animals in the film are mostly loved, however it is love and compassion for other humans that the film shows the characters having difficulty with - and this is where the emotional impact of the film is. "Love's a Bitch" almost certainly appears to suggest this.

Overall, I found the "Amores Perros" deeply interesting, despite its drop in pace around the middle. The narrative is unusual, however, this is not neccessarily a bad thing as in this case I believe it to have worked. The style of the film is also extremely realistic (even the way the romances don't have fairytale endings) - it says a lot about the industry in Mexico and how they intend to really reflect the Mexican culture. If I had one criticism, however, I would say that perhaps the three stories were too losely connected - although one may argue that this would take away the realism of it all, and make the film too much like a Hollywood film. I think it all depends on taste really, and to be honest, I still really enjoyed the movie. I look forward to watching "Babel".