Amores perros
Amores perros | |
---|---|
Directed by | director |
Written by | writer |
Produced by | producer |
Starring | Emilio Echevarría Gael García Bernal Goya Toledo Álvaro Guerrero Vanessa Bauche Jorge Salinas Adriana Barraza |
Narrated by | narrator |
Cinematography | Rodrigo Prieto |
Edited by | Alejandro González Iñárritu Luis Carballar Fernando Pérez Unda |
Music by | Gustavo Santaolalla |
Production companies | Zeta Entertainment Alta Vista Films |
Distributed by | distributor |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 153 minutes[1] |
Country | Mexico |
Language | Spanish |
Budget | $2.4 million[2] |
Box office | $20.9 million[3] |
Amores perros is a 2000 Mexican psychological drama film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, in his feature directorial debut, and written by Guillermo Arriaga, based on a story by both. Serving as the first installment in González Iñárritu's "Trilogy of Death," which includes 21 Grams and Babel,[4] the film employs the multi-narrative hyperlink cinema style and features an ensemble cast. Structured as a triptych, it weaves together three distinct stories connected by a car crash in Mexico City.
The stories center on a teenager in the slums who becomes involved in dogfighting, a model who seriously injures her leg, and a mysterious hitman. The stories are linked in various ways, including the presence of dogs in each of them.
Premiering on May 14, 2000, at the
In December 2020, Amores perros was remastered by The Criterion Collection.[7]
Title
The title is a pun in Spanish; the word "perros," which literally means "dogs," can also be used to refer to misery. Thus, it roughly translates to 'bad loves' with canine connotations. The film was released under its Spanish title in the English-speaking world, although it was sometimes marketed as "Love's a Bitch." This alternate title conveys a similar idea as the original, keeping the canine allusion.
Plot
The film is constructed from three distinct stories linked by a car crash that brings the characters briefly together.
Octavio y Susana
Octavio (
Daniel y Valeria
Magazine publisher Daniel (
. While she is in the hospital, Daniel finally rescues Richie from the floorboards. When she returns, Valeria drives her wheelchair through the torn-up living room and looks out of the window expecting to see a billboard bearing her likeness, only to find it has been removed.El Chivo y Maru
The vagrant occasionally seen in Octavio's story is revealed to be a professional
At Ramiro's funeral, Octavio meets Susana, and again attempts to convince her to run away with him, but she angrily rejects the notion. A few days later, Octavio is shown waiting at the bus station for Susana. She never shows up, and Octavio does not board the bus. El Chivo learns that his client and his intended victim are half-brothers. He leaves both men alive and chained to separate walls with a pistol within reach between them, their fate left uncertain. He then breaks into his daughter Maru's house and leaves her a large bundle of money along with a message on her answering machine explaining what happened to him. When he is about to tell Maru that he loves her, the answering machine stops recording. He then goes to an autoshop, where he sells the client's SUV. The mechanic asks him the dog's name, and El Chivo calls him "Negro" ("Black"). After El Chivo receives the money for the car, he and Negro walk away, disappearing into the horizon.
Cast
- Emilio Echevarría as El Chivo
- Gael García Bernal as Octavio
- Goya Toledo as Valeria
- Álvaro Guerrero as Daniel
- Vanessa Bauche as Susana
- Jorge Salinas as Luis
- Marco Pérez as Ramiro
- Adriana Barraza as Octavio and Ramiro's mother
- Rodrigo Murray as Gustavo
- Gustavo Sánchez Parra as Jarocho[8][9][10]
Themes
Dogs and disloyalty
Each of the three tales is a reflection on the cruelty of humans towards both animals and other humans, showing how humans may live dark or even hideous lives. But the film's theme is loyalty, as symbolized by the dog, "man's best friend". Dogs are important to the main characters in each of the three stories, and in each story various forms of human loyalty or disloyalty are shown: disloyalty to a brother by trying to seduce the brother's wife, disloyalty to a wife by keeping a mistress with subsequent disloyalty to the mistress when she is injured and loses her beauty, loss of loyalty to youthful idealism and rediscovered loyalty to a daughter as a hit-man falls from and then attempts to regain grace.
Dogfighting is banned in all Latin American countries but exists as an element of the underground economy. Although violent, dogfighting provides an opportunity for Octavio to make money. This is true to life in the sense that participating in the underground economy gives people in the lower class the ability to make money and experience mobility. González Iñárritu was heavily criticized for his inclusion of dogfighting in the film but has claimed that although it is horrible, dogfighting is one of the harsh realities of Mexico City.[11]
Inequality
The three overlapping stories all take place in Mexico City, but because of
Violence
Amores perros contains
Production
Produced by Zeta Film and AltaVista Films, production began on 12 April 1999.
The DVD of Amores perros has a
Soundtrack
The soundtrack includes songs by Latin American rock bands including
Reception and awards
The film was critically acclaimed and received many nominations and awards. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 92% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 118 reviews, with an average score of 7.75/10. The consensus reads "The brutality of Amores Perros may be difficult to watch at times, but this intense, gritty film packs a hard wallop".[15] On Metacritic, it has a score of 83 out of 100 based on 31 critics.[16]
- The film won the Prize of the Critic's Week at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.
- The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language and Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix.
- The film won the top award at the 2001 edition of Fantasporto, defeating In the Light of the Moon, Audition and Ringu 0: Birthday.
- The film ranked 4th place for the Best Foreign Film Category at the 2002 Turkish Film Critics Association awards, ahead of cinematic heavyweights such as Cube, Run Lola Run, and Monster's Ball and blockbuster heavyweights such as A Beautiful Mind, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.
- The film won the prestigious .
- The film won the Grand Prix for Best Film at Film Fest Gent in 2000.
- The film won the Melhor Filme Estrangeiro Prize at the 2002 Grande Prêmio do Cinema Brasileiro, defeating Moulin Rouge! and Apocalypse Now Redux.
- The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film but lost to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
- Amores perros also appeared on Empire's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time where it ranked at number 492.[17]
Impact
Amores perros drew widespread attention to and condemnation of the practice of dog fighting in Mexico.[18] Lead actress Vanessa Bauche has supported animal advocates' anti-dogfighting campaign.[19] Dog fighting was finally outlawed in Mexico on 24 June 2017.[20]
See also
- Hyperlink cinema - the film style of using multiple inter-connected story lines.
- Yuva/Aayutha Ezhuthu - Hindi/Tamil films with similar narrative structure.
References
- ^ "Amores perros (Love's a Bitch) (18)". British Board of Film Classification. 22 February 2001. Retrieved 16 November 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-85170-973-4.
- ^ Amores perros (2001) - Box Office Mojo
- ^ "The Significance Of The Queer And The Dog In Alejandro González Iñárritu's Amores Perros (2000): A Masculinity At War". Archived from the original on 12 September 2018. Retrieved 1 November 2014.
- ^ "Semaine de la Critique du Festival de Cannes". archives.semainedelacritique.com. Retrieved 10 May 2022.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
- ^ "Amorres Perros tendrá restauración en 4k por Criterion Collection". www.milenio.com (in Mexican Spanish). 15 September 2020. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
- ^ "Amores Perros". TV Guide. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
- ^ "Amores Perros (2000)". IMDB. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
- ^ "Amores Perros". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
- ^ Romney, Jonathan (22 August 2000). "none". The Guardian.
- S2CID 154200790.
- ^ M, Matt (4 October 1989). "Off-the-Books Growth Fuels Mexico --- but Underground Economy is a Two-Edged Sword". Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Aquino, Jim (April 2001). "Unleashed Resistance". Metro Silicon Valley. Retrieved 28 November 2014.
- ^ "Amores Perros (2001)- Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 7 July 2019.
- ^ "Amores Perros". Metacritic.
- ^ Empire Features—The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time
- ^ Romney, Jonathan (22 August 2000). "Going to the dogs". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
Amores Perros has been attacked for its savage dogfight scenes.
- ^ Pacelle, Wayne (26 April 2017). "Mexico adopts felony-level penalties for dogfighting". Humane Society of the United States. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
The practice [of dogfighting], put on display years ago in the movie Amores Perros – whose leading actress, Vanessa Bauche, has supported our anti-dogfighting campaign – has been a persistent and widespread animal welfare problem in Mexico
- ^ "Dog fights as sport now illegal in Mexico". Mexico News Daily. 24 June 2017. Archived from the original on 27 June 2017. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
The blood sport of dog fighting became illegal today in Mexico.
External links
- Amores perros at IMDb
- Amores perros at Box Office Mojo
- Amores perros at Rotten Tomatoes
- Amores perros at Metacritic
- Amores perros: The Dogs That Heralded the Millennium an essay by Criterion Collection