By elevating dogs to this level of importance, Iñárritu is making a statement about the level to which society has descended. And Chivo treats his animals with greater respect than he accords to any human. Valerie loves her pooch more than a child (and, one might argue, more than Daniel). Octavio makes his fortune by fighting dogs.
Canines feature prominently in all three stories. The dogs in this film are almost as important as the humans. But, when Chivo is hired by one brother to kill another over money, he arrives at a few realizations about the importance of family. He spies on his adult child from afar, never having the courage to approach her, while he takes odd jobs as a hit man to feed himself and his small menagerie of mangy dogs. Now, many years later, he lives with regrets. Chivo is an ex-guerilla who abandoned his wife and daughter for The Cause. Suddenly, the rosy life he envisioned reeks of decay.įinally, there's Chivo (Emilio Echevarría), a mysterious, wild-looking figure who hovers around the periphery of the other stories until his tale is finally told. Valeria is seriously injured in a car accident and Daniel must cope with living with a mentally and physically crippled woman whose modeling career is at an end. Together, they make the perfect couple - young, good-looking, and in love - until tragedy strikes. He's a magazine publisher who has left his wife and two children to be with her. Her face and body are plastered all over billboards throughout Mexico City. She's a world-class model who has hit the big time. Meanwhile, a couple of rungs higher on the social ladder are Daniel (Álvaro Guerrero) and Valeria (Goya Toledo). But, once Ramiro finds out about his little brother's windfall, he wants a piece of the action, and all of Octavio's carefully laid plans are put in jeopardy. Instead, he decides to get involved in dog fighting, and he's fortunate to own a real winner. Ramiro's meager income as a grocery store clerk is supplemented by convenience store hold ups, but that's not a path Octavio is interested in taking. Octavio is determined to make enough money so that he and Susana can run away together (along with her infant son), but, in Mexico City, where poverty abounds, clean money is hard to find. She's his sister-in-law, but that doesn't stem his ardor for her, and, because he treats her with a degree of kindness that her brutish husband, Ramiro (Marco Pérez), never shows, she can't help but be attracted to him. The first two we meet are Octavio (Gael García Bernal) and Susana (Vanessa Bauche). Iñárritu's are brutal and lacking even a modicum of charisma. Tarantino's anti-heroes are cool and suave, with always the right one-liner to offer. There are hit men, murderers, philanderers, thieves, betrayers, and other assorted riff-raff.
The others comprise a web of corruption and deceit. Of the seven or eight significant characters traversing Iñárritu's terrain, only one could be considered sympathetic. So, although the territory may be familiar to viewers of Pulp Fiction, the vantage point is radically different.Īmores Perros introduces us to a veritable Rogues Gallery of individuals. They are exposed for what they are - human beings whose moral compasses have become twisted. In Amores Perros, criminals are not romanticized. This was done through clever dialogue and stylish filmmaking techniques. However, one of Pulp Fiction's trademarks was to glamorize the gangster - to make the traditional "bad guy" seem hip and interesting.
The plot unravels episodically and in a non-linear fashion, with characters from one segment occasionally appearing in, or passing through, another. Amores Perros, like Quentin Tarantino's Oscar-nominated opus, deals with men and women who live on the seedy side of life. There are undeniable similarities, although most of them are at the surface level. Without a doubt, the majority of the reviews of Amores Perros, the acclaimed debut feature from Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, will, at one time or another, invoke Pulp Fiction.