Amores perros
Encyclopedia
Amores perros is a 2000 neorealist Mexican film, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
. Amores Perros is the first movie in Iñárritu's trilogy of death, and was followed by 21 Grams
and Babel. It is a triptych
; an anthology film
, sometimes referred to as the "Mexican Pulp Fiction
," containing three distinct stories which are connected by a car accident in Mexico City
. Each of the three tales is also a reflection on the cruelty of humans toward animals and each other, showing how they may live dark or even hideous lives. Amores Perros was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
in 2000 and won the Ariel Award for Best Picture
from the Mexican Academy of Film. The film Amores Perros gives a clear representation of the division between classes in Mexican society, as we are shown characters from under, working and middle classes. 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 girl-friend, 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.
The film was released under its Spanish title in the English-speaking world
, although its title was sometimes translated as Love's a Bitch in marketing. In a 2001 interview on National Public Radio, director Iñárritu pointed out that an American English
idiom
, Love's a Bitch is not a satisfactory translation of the title (see below).
The soundtrack included songs by well-known Latin American rock bands, such as Café Tacuba, Control Machete
and Bersuit Vergarabat
.
Octavio y Susana
The first segment stars Gael García Bernal
and Vanessa Bauche
as the title characters. Susana is Octavio's sister-in-law; however, Octavio is in love with her and doesn't like the way his brother, Ramiro, treats her. Octavio tries to persuade her to run away with him to get from under Ramiro's abuse. Needing to make money so that he and Susana can escape and start a life of their own, Octavio becomes involved in the business of dog fighting
. Octavio makes enough money to run away with Susana, but Susana takes the money and leaves with her husband. Octavio continues his dog fighting business until a rival owner shoots his dog Cofi. Octavio stabs the rival owner and finds himself in a car chase with his lifelong friend, Jorge, and the wounded dog. A collision follows; Jorge dies and Octavio is badly injured.
Daniel y Valeria
The next segment stars Álvaro Guerrero
and Goya Toledo
. Daniel is a successful magazine publisher who leaves his family to live with the Spanish
supermodel Valeria played by Goya Toledo
. Valeria's leg is severely broken in the accident with Octavio's car and she may be unable to continue working as a model. Valeria is using a wheelchair while she recuperates in the apartment she shares with Daniel. Her dog Richie disappears under the floorboards one day and stays there for days. The missing dog triggers serious tension for the couple, causing numerous fights which leads to doubts about their relationship on both sides. Valeria re-injures her leg trying to help the dog, resulting in severe internal bleeding which leads to gangrene
. Her doctor is forced to amputate the leg, removing any chance she might have had at returning to her modeling career. Once her leg is gone, she realizes that her life is most likely ruined since her sense of purpose, modeling, has been taken from her.
El Chivo y Maru
The final segment stars Emilio Echevarría
and Lourdes Echevarría. The story concerns a former private school teacher who had become involved in guerrilla movements that landed him in prison for 20 years. He appears in the film as a bedraggled vagrant pushing a junk cart accompanied by several mongrel dogs for whom he cares. Though he appears to live in perpetual squalor in an abandoned warehouse, he is in fact a professional hitman, El Chivo (The Goat). At times throughout his story, Chivo tries to make contact with his daughter, Maru, whom he abandoned when she was a two-year-old child when he began his guerrilla involvement. We learn in the film that instead of telling her the truth about the abandonment and the prison sentence, her mother told her that her father had died.
Meanwhile, Ramiro and an accomplice are attempting to rob a bank when he is shot and killed. Octavio, seriously injured from the accident, sees Susana for the first time since she and Ramiro fled with his money. Despite having been wronged, Octavio tries again to get Susana to run away with him, but she becomes angry with the fact that Octavio is willing to run away with her after she has just lost somebody she loves.
El Chivo is hired by a man to kill his business partner, and Chivo is about to make the kill when the film's central car crash interrupts him. During the chaos at the crash scene, Chivo steals Octavio's wounded dog and takes it home to nurture it. While Chivo is away from the warehouse one day, the rescued dog kills all of the other dogs in the house due to its previous dog fighting. Chivo is intensely upset and prepares to kill the dog but forgives him as he knows no better. Still grieving for his beloved dogs, Chivo captures his intended victim, and after learning that the victim is the client's half-brother, he also captures his client. After shaving his beard and grooming his hair (a drastic change in his appearance) he leaves both men alive and chained to the separate walls with a pistol within reach between them, their fate left undetermined. He then breaks into his daughter's house while she is away, he leaves her a large bundle of money and leaves a message on her answering machine explaining what happened to him and why the family was split as well as telling her he loves her, but just as before he says it, the answer machine stops recording so it doesn't record when he tells her how much he loves her. Then we see him go to an autoshop where he sells the client's SUV. The mechanic asks him what is the name of the dog; He calls him "Negro." After he receives the money for the car Chivo and Negro walk away and disappear once more.
One of the most controversial aspects of the film are the scenes of dog fighting. Iñárritu explains that no dogs were harmed during the making of Amores perros. In the scenes where dogs are apparently attacking each other, they were actually playing. Their muzzles were covered with fine fishing line, so that they were unable to bite another dog. In the shots where dogs are apparently dead or dying, they were sedated (under the watchful eye of the Mexican ASPCA). The realism of the scenes is amplified by quick cuts and sound effects.
Another unusual aspect of the production was the danger of filming in the poorer sections of Mexico City. The director and some of the crew were actually robbed by street gangs. Ultimately, the gang members became friends with them and protected them while they were in the streets.
Si tu historia acabó bien, explícalo en el canal de "amores". Si acabó mal, explícalo en "perros" (loosely, "If your life turned out well, thank your lucky stars, if not, tell it to the dogs." To the author of these lines, amores is life's "goodness" or "sweetness", as in the Spanish aphorism, Hechos son amores, que no buenas razones ("Achievement is sweeter than the best excuse"). "Perro" is dog, and many English phrases use the word similarly, as in the above translation of the film title as "Love's a Bitch" (bitch being a female dog). Another Spanish aphorism is ¡Esta perra vida! which could be rendered, "My life is going to the dogs," or more famously, "It's a dog's life." Accordingly, if amores translates as "all that's good in life," and perros is misery and bad luck, the title of the movie could connote, "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose."
Posters for the movie often posed the question, ¿Qué es el amor? (What is love?), followed by the film title, "amores perros", in which case the answer could be either "amores perros," or "wretched affairs" (and surely "wretched" can describe the human-to-human love-lives of the film's three protagonists!) or, more idiomatically, "bad luck in love." But all three characters have strong bonds of love with their dogs—and dogs are "man's best friend." In this sense one interpretation of amores perros is the pun "amor es perros," or "love is man's best friend." Another interpretation is that of a pun; Perros, while not a feminine word, could more specifically mean "Bitch" (i.e. - a female dog) - and so from the common phrase "Life's a bitch" could become "Love's a bitch", answering the "¿Qué es el amor?/What is love?" question from the posters.
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican film director.González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the DGA of America for Best Director. He is also the first and only Mexican born director to have won the Prix de la mise en scene...
. Amores Perros is the first movie in Iñárritu's trilogy of death, and was followed by 21 Grams
21 Grams
21 Grams is a 2003 American drama film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga. It stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Danny Huston, and Benicio del Toro....
and Babel. It is a triptych
Triptych
A triptych , from tri-= "three" + ptysso= "to fold") is a work of art which is divided into three sections, or three carved panels which are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works...
; an anthology film
Anthology film
An anthology film is a feature film consisting of several different short films, often tied together by only a single theme, premise, or brief interlocking event . Sometimes each one is directed by a different director...
, sometimes referred to as the "Mexican Pulp Fiction
Pulp Fiction (film)
Pulp Fiction is a 1994 American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino, who co-wrote its screenplay with Roger Avary. The film is known for its rich, eclectic dialogue, ironic mix of humor and violence, nonlinear storyline, and host of cinematic allusions and pop culture references...
," containing three distinct stories which are connected by a car accident in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
. Each of the three tales is also a reflection on the cruelty of humans toward animals and each other, showing how they may live dark or even hideous lives. Amores Perros was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
in 2000 and won the Ariel Award for Best Picture
Ariel Award for Best Picture
The Ariel Award for Best Picture is the highest award given in Mexico to a single film and is part of the Mexican Academy of Film's Ariel Award program.-Award results:*1946 La barraca...
from the Mexican Academy of Film. The film Amores Perros gives a clear representation of the division between classes in Mexican society, as we are shown characters from under, working and middle classes. But the film's theme is loyalty, as symbolized by the dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
, "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 girl-friend, 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.
The film was released under its Spanish title in the English-speaking world
English-speaking world
The English-speaking world consists of those countries or regions that use the English language to one degree or another. For more information, please see:Lists:* List of countries by English-speaking population...
, although its title was sometimes translated as Love's a Bitch in marketing. In a 2001 interview on National Public Radio, director Iñárritu pointed out that an American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
idiom
Idiom
Idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made...
, Love's a Bitch is not a satisfactory translation of the title (see below).
The soundtrack included songs by well-known Latin American rock bands, such as Café Tacuba, Control Machete
Control Machete
Control Machete is a Mexican hip hop group from Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. Its members are Fermin IV , Patricio "Pato" Chapa Elizalde, and Toy Kenobi .-History:...
and Bersuit Vergarabat
Bersuit Vergarabat
Bersuit, formed formally in 1989, is one of the most important Argentine rock bands of the 1990s/2000s. The previous name of the band was Henry y la Palangana....
.
Plot
The film is constructed from three distinct stories linked by a car accident that brings the characters briefly together.Octavio y Susana
The first segment stars Gael García Bernal
Gael García Bernal
Gael García Bernal is a Mexican film actor and director.-Early life:García Bernal was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, the son of Patricia Bernal, an actress and former model, and José Ángel García, an actor and director. His stepfather is Sergio Yazbek, whom his mother married when García Bernal was...
and Vanessa Bauche
Vanessa Bauche
-Early life:Bauche was born Alma Vanessa Bauche Chavira, named after actress Vanessa Redgrave. Her father was a Gypsy who married her mother, a woman who aspired to be a dancer and singer. At the time of the marriage, her mother was sixteen years her father's junior. The couple divorced when Bauche...
as the title characters. Susana is Octavio's sister-in-law; however, Octavio is in love with her and doesn't like the way his brother, Ramiro, treats her. Octavio tries to persuade her to run away with him to get from under Ramiro's abuse. Needing to make money so that he and Susana can escape and start a life of their own, Octavio becomes involved in the business of dog fighting
Dog fighting
Dog fighting is a form of blood sport in which game dogs are made to fight, sometimes to the death. It is illegal in most developed countries. Dog fighting is used for entertainment and may also generate revenue from stud fees, admission fees and gambling....
. Octavio makes enough money to run away with Susana, but Susana takes the money and leaves with her husband. Octavio continues his dog fighting business until a rival owner shoots his dog Cofi. Octavio stabs the rival owner and finds himself in a car chase with his lifelong friend, Jorge, and the wounded dog. A collision follows; Jorge dies and Octavio is badly injured.
Daniel y Valeria
The next segment stars Álvaro Guerrero
Álvaro Guerrero
Álvaro Guerrero is a Mexican film actor from Mexico City, Mexico, best known for his role as "Daniel" in the 2000 film Amores Perros.-External links:...
and Goya Toledo
Goya Toledo
Goya Toledo is a Spanish film and television actress and model.Born at Arrecife on the island of Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, on the 24 September 1969, Toledo started out as a model before venturing into acting. Her most well-known role to date has been playing the model Valeria in the...
. Daniel is a successful magazine publisher who leaves his family to live with the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
supermodel Valeria played by Goya Toledo
Goya Toledo
Goya Toledo is a Spanish film and television actress and model.Born at Arrecife on the island of Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, on the 24 September 1969, Toledo started out as a model before venturing into acting. Her most well-known role to date has been playing the model Valeria in the...
. Valeria's leg is severely broken in the accident with Octavio's car and she may be unable to continue working as a model. Valeria is using a wheelchair while she recuperates in the apartment she shares with Daniel. Her dog Richie disappears under the floorboards one day and stays there for days. The missing dog triggers serious tension for the couple, causing numerous fights which leads to doubts about their relationship on both sides. Valeria re-injures her leg trying to help the dog, resulting in severe internal bleeding which leads to gangrene
Gangrene
Gangrene is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies . This may occur after an injury or infection, or in people suffering from any chronic health problem affecting blood circulation. The primary cause of gangrene is reduced blood...
. Her doctor is forced to amputate the leg, removing any chance she might have had at returning to her modeling career. Once her leg is gone, she realizes that her life is most likely ruined since her sense of purpose, modeling, has been taken from her.
El Chivo y Maru
The final segment stars Emilio Echevarría
Emilio Echevarría
Emilio Echevarría is a Mexican actor. Internationally he is perhaps best known for appearing in a trio of films: Amores Perros , Y tu mamá también, and Babel .Echevarría also had small parts in two American productions, first as Raoul, a Cuban agent in the James Bond...
and Lourdes Echevarría. The story concerns a former private school teacher who had become involved in guerrilla movements that landed him in prison for 20 years. He appears in the film as a bedraggled vagrant pushing a junk cart accompanied by several mongrel dogs for whom he cares. Though he appears to live in perpetual squalor in an abandoned warehouse, he is in fact a professional hitman, El Chivo (The Goat). At times throughout his story, Chivo tries to make contact with his daughter, Maru, whom he abandoned when she was a two-year-old child when he began his guerrilla involvement. We learn in the film that instead of telling her the truth about the abandonment and the prison sentence, her mother told her that her father had died.
Meanwhile, Ramiro and an accomplice are attempting to rob a bank when he is shot and killed. Octavio, seriously injured from the accident, sees Susana for the first time since she and Ramiro fled with his money. Despite having been wronged, Octavio tries again to get Susana to run away with him, but she becomes angry with the fact that Octavio is willing to run away with her after she has just lost somebody she loves.
El Chivo is hired by a man to kill his business partner, and Chivo is about to make the kill when the film's central car crash interrupts him. During the chaos at the crash scene, Chivo steals Octavio's wounded dog and takes it home to nurture it. While Chivo is away from the warehouse one day, the rescued dog kills all of the other dogs in the house due to its previous dog fighting. Chivo is intensely upset and prepares to kill the dog but forgives him as he knows no better. Still grieving for his beloved dogs, Chivo captures his intended victim, and after learning that the victim is the client's half-brother, he also captures his client. After shaving his beard and grooming his hair (a drastic change in his appearance) he leaves both men alive and chained to the separate walls with a pistol within reach between them, their fate left undetermined. He then breaks into his daughter's house while she is away, he leaves her a large bundle of money and leaves a message on her answering machine explaining what happened to him and why the family was split as well as telling her he loves her, but just as before he says it, the answer machine stops recording so it doesn't record when he tells her how much he loves her. Then we see him go to an autoshop where he sells the client's SUV. The mechanic asks him what is the name of the dog; He calls him "Negro." After he receives the money for the car Chivo and Negro walk away and disappear once more.
Production
The film was produced by Zeta Film and AltaVista Films. Production began on 12 April 1999.Special notes on production
On the DVD release there is an informative commentary track by the director and the screenwriter.One of the most controversial aspects of the film are the scenes of dog fighting. Iñárritu explains that no dogs were harmed during the making of Amores perros. In the scenes where dogs are apparently attacking each other, they were actually playing. Their muzzles were covered with fine fishing line, so that they were unable to bite another dog. In the shots where dogs are apparently dead or dying, they were sedated (under the watchful eye of the Mexican ASPCA). The realism of the scenes is amplified by quick cuts and sound effects.
Another unusual aspect of the production was the danger of filming in the poorer sections of Mexico City. The director and some of the crew were actually robbed by street gangs. Ultimately, the gang members became friends with them and protected them while they were in the streets.
Awards
The film was met with very positive reviews from critics and received many nominations and awards.- The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language FilmAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language FilmThe Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
. - The film won the top award at the 2001 edition of FantasportoFantasportoFantasporto, also known as Fantas, is an international film festival, annually organized since 1981 in Porto, Portugal. Giving screen space to commercial feature films, auteur films and experimental projects from all over the world, Fantasporto has created enthusiastic audiences, ranging from...
. - The film won the Prize of the Critic's Week at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival2000 Cannes Film FestivalThe 2000 Cannes Film Festival started on May 14 and ran until May 25. The Palme d'Or went to the Danish film Dancer in the Dark by Lars von Trier.-Jury:* Luc Besson, President * Jonathan Demme * Nicole Garcia...
. - Amores perros also appeared on EmpireEmpire (magazine)Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
s 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time where it ranked at number 492.
Translation of amores perros
Among the few Spanish language lines found on the official Amores perros website are these:Si tu historia acabó bien, explícalo en el canal de "amores". Si acabó mal, explícalo en "perros" (loosely, "If your life turned out well, thank your lucky stars, if not, tell it to the dogs." To the author of these lines, amores is life's "goodness" or "sweetness", as in the Spanish aphorism, Hechos son amores, que no buenas razones ("Achievement is sweeter than the best excuse"). "Perro" is dog, and many English phrases use the word similarly, as in the above translation of the film title as "Love's a Bitch" (bitch being a female dog). Another Spanish aphorism is ¡Esta perra vida! which could be rendered, "My life is going to the dogs," or more famously, "It's a dog's life." Accordingly, if amores translates as "all that's good in life," and perros is misery and bad luck, the title of the movie could connote, "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose."
Posters for the movie often posed the question, ¿Qué es el amor? (What is love?), followed by the film title, "amores perros", in which case the answer could be either "amores perros," or "wretched affairs" (and surely "wretched" can describe the human-to-human love-lives of the film's three protagonists!) or, more idiomatically, "bad luck in love." But all three characters have strong bonds of love with their dogs—and dogs are "man's best friend." In this sense one interpretation of amores perros is the pun "amor es perros," or "love is man's best friend." Another interpretation is that of a pun; Perros, while not a feminine word, could more specifically mean "Bitch" (i.e. - a female dog) - and so from the common phrase "Life's a bitch" could become "Love's a bitch", answering the "¿Qué es el amor?/What is love?" question from the posters.
See also
- Hyperlink cinemaHyperlink cinemaHyperlink cinema is a term coined by author Alissa Quart, who used the term in her review of the film Happy Endings for the film journal Film Comment in 2005. Film critic Roger Ebert popularized the term when reviewing the film Syriana in 2005...
- the film style of using multiple inter-connected story lines. - YuvaYuvaYuva , originally titled Howrah Bridge is a feature film directed by Indian director Mani Ratnam and released in 2004. Simultaneously made in Hindi and Tamil , the prime objective of the movie was to motivate educated Indian youths to enter politics.The film tells the stories of three young men...
/ayutha ezhuthu - Hindi/Tamil films with similar narrative structure.