Anna Reid

It's a dog's life: Amores perros

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

(…) full of sound and fury.

Alejandro González Iñárritu's directorial debut, Amores perros (2000, Mexico) translated as 'Love's a Bitch', presents a raw and gritty view of Mexico City and its 20 million inhabitants and 1 million stray dogs. A fatal car crash, around which three different subplots are interwoven, acts as a catalyst for the action. Past and present are intercut using flashbacks and flash forwards, disrupting the chronological sequences and creating a narrative structure which at the same time reflects the city's physical and social labyrinth. The triptych hinges on the pivotal car accident which we return to various times during the film, viewing it from different camera angles and characters' perspectives. The rhythm of the opening scene is fast; a kinetic journey through the streets of Mexico City. Octavio, his friend Luis and Cofi, a wounded rottweiler, are being chased by an armed gang seeking revenge for a stabbing. The jerky hand-held camera provokes a sense of out-of-controlness which is later echoed in the narrative sequences, immediately immersing the viewer in the action. The explosiveness of this prelude to the three storylines is dramatically brought to a close by the inevitable crashing of cars, followed by the eerie ringing of a car horn, leaving Luis dead and three wounded (including Cofi). The subplots which follow move fluidly between the past, present and future, shedding light on the reasons behind the fatal crash and its subsequent consequences.

Rewind and enter the slum-dwelling adolesents Octavio, his brother Ramiro and Ramiro's wife Susana. Susana is beaten by her husband and she is the object of Octavio's desire. Ramiro, a supermarket cashier, has a more lucrative occupation holding up chemists and finally a bank in which he is shot dead. Cofi, the dog, becomes the means for Octavio to escape Mexico City with Susana by entering the underground but well-paid business of dog fighting, through which he becomes involved in gang warfare, taking us back to the opening scene.

Rewind and enter Daniel, a successful but philandering publicist who leaves his wife to set up home with Valeria, a Spanish model, and her spoilt lap dog, Richie. Valeria is seriously injured in the car crash and we move into the world post-crash. She is now confined to a wheelchair with nothing better to do than to review her past, her photos and to stare out of the window at a poster of herself in her former glory. The relationship slowly deflates, just like the balloon with 'I love you' inscribed on it hanging over their bed. The frivolity of their liason is exposed and the superficial and ephemeral nature of beauty is questioned, the decay symbolically heightened by an infestation of rats. In a scene reminiscent of Poe's Black Cat, Richie becomes trapped beneath the wooden floorboards of the flat, but here the gothic horror of Poe becomes uncannily surreal and melodramatic.

Rewind again and enter a corrupt police officer and a shady businessman who wants his brother to be assassinated, culminating in a Cain and Abel scenario. They transport us to the central character of the third subplot: El Chivo (the goat). We have been observing El Chivo, accompanied by his shopping trolley and his medley of stray dogs weaving his way through the maze of Mexico City, tying together the different narrative strands. El Chivo was a University lecturer turned guerrilla in the 68 movement, he was later imprisoned and then became a homeless alcoholic turned hired assasin. His past constantly haunts him; his failed revolution which was meant to make the world a better place to live in, his failed marriage and his estranged daughter, Maru. He is witness to the fatal crash and, after having removed Octavio's wallet, he rescues the wounded Cofi. However, violence breeds violence and Cofi having been trained to kill other dogs kills El Chivo's family of dogs thus making him reflect on his past, on violence and the fragility of life, and on the role of family.

On the surface the narrative structure is reminiscent of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, but instead of glamorising the underworld of violence, González Iñárritu creates a narrative complexity which goes far beyond Tarantino's depiction. The characters are multi-dimensional and complex and they are pushed to the limit to see how they cope with acute situations. The writer, Guillermo Arriaga Jordán, recognizes the influence of the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo on his script. Violence and death pervade Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, there is no chronological sequence and the narrative is based on a poetic structure in which many scenes are integrated by the repetition of key images. The accumulation of different voices help to create a timeless world in which the inhabitants of the novel become imprisoned. He also acknowledges Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (whose title is taken from Shakespeare's Macbeth, a tragic tale of tyranny, corruption and brutal violence) as an influence in the use of time frames, multiple perspectives and the paradoxical characters who are bent on destruction through which the psychopathology of the family is explored. The film relies not just on the visual, but also on the sonorous to tie together the disparate narrative strands. The explosive soundtrack underlines the highly-charged key emotions. Slow, eerie and dissonant music accentuates nostalgia and melodrama while fast, pulsating music underscores brutal scenes of sex and violence creating a vertigenous display of violent takes which alternate to the rhythm of the music.

The film is a creative response to the social and moral consequences of years of economic and political instability. Modern Mexico City is a legacy of the economic crises of the 1980s and 1990s, the numerous devaluations, political corruption and the earthquake of 1985. After the last devalution in 1993 and the economic plight that followed, public security became one of the main problems in the country, epitomised on an economic level by the kidnappings of businessmen and on a political level by the assasinations of politicians. The main victims were those belonging to the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) who spoke out against the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Amores perros illustrates how the social effects of the crises are present at every level of society, but it also explores the way in which the resulting violence impinges on individuals.

In the film the dogs become a metaphor for violence, for the unrelenting physical and emotional brutality which is also underlined in the use of violent language which at times comes to sound like a dog barking. This is a tale in which the dogs become innocent victims in an endless cycle of violence, where they are moulded by their owners. Dogs are just as important in the narratives as human beings, and what happens to the dogs happens to their owners in this biting and truculent film in which the primal emotions of love, betrayal, instinct, hate, pain and fury abound. It is also about the ease with which people commit acts of violence and the problems they face in finding redemption. The director wanted "to find the perfect catharsis of the uncomfortable shame of the viewers watching themselves" and "to exorcise my own terrible fear of the ordinary human experience of day-to-day existence". The film has been criticized for the vivid dog fighting scenes, although the film makers have stressed that at no point did any dog suffer, but dog fights happen and in the film they reflect the bestiality of the city.

The first story depicts domestic violence, gang violence and dog violence, but dogs are used to escape from social and economic deprivation, they become the means of survival, although the irony lies in that in fact the opposite happens. Dog fighting becomes a means of earning quick money within a violent entourage in a country where it is almost impossible to advance economically without resorting to some kind of corruption which permeates every level of society. The majority of the population are lower to lower-middle class. They strive to overcome their economic situation only to plunge further into economic deprivation after numerous devaluations and political corruption, rendering the money saved as useless. This situation of spiralling poverty makes people fight back in order to subsist, either using the informal sector of the economy, selling cheap products made in China or black market goods on the streets. Kidnappings, until recently an almost daily occurrence, drug-related crimes or, in the case of this film, dog fights thrive in Mexico City. It is not violence for the sake of violence, but rather violence as a means of excoriation.

Amores perros marks a dramatic new direction in Mexican cinema, moving away from the tendency to locate the narrative in a distant past, viewed through a rose-coloured lens. For example Like Water for Chocolate (1992) and The Comet (1998) are both situated during the Mexican Revolution, one of the events upon which a narrative of national identity has been based. In these films the takes are framed in blurry focus and bathed in warm yellows and oranges. In contrast Amores perros uses stark matter-of-fact takes, creating a sensation of something more disconcerting. Everything is visible, it shows the city as it is - brilliant colours shining under the polluted haze, the lights of the city at night, or the dreary greys of the outskirts. Using a realism genre the film takes a critical look at Mexican society. In a British context the equivalent would be the shift away from the Merchant-Ivory films towards the production of inner-city films such as Nil by Mouth or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, although neither have the same narrative complexity as Amores perros.

It also marks a shift away from the stereotypical representations of Mexico visible in Hollywood-style films where the country is portrayed as being a haven for runaway crooks or as an exotic and sensual playground. It avoids the mythic arena apparent in recent films such as The Mexican (2001) where Mexicans are represented as tequila swigging gangsters or corrupt cops, all of whom are riddled with superstitious beliefs, or in Traffic (2000) where again drug traffickers, police corruption and macho behaviour abound. In addition the Mexican scenes are filmed in sepia whereas those filmed in the United States are not, thus creating a marked division between the two countries and giving the impression that Mexico is chimerical and located in a distant past. In comparison, Amores perros presents a vivid and gritty picture of the escalating violence in the city, at the same time as portraying a very complex and contradictory view of Mexico City, on the one hand the brutality of it, and on the other its beauty and fascination.

The city becomes a metaphor for imprisonment, a prison-house of violence, betrayal and decay. Nevertheless at times the city offers brief glimpses of redemption through its mists of contamination, although they are often crushed. Octavio tries to flee unsuccessfully from his destitute life in the city by inviting Susana to the north. Valeria and Daniel remain confined to their flat, surrounded by the rats and their decaying relationship, Richie is temporarily imprisoned under the floorboards, and Valeria is literally imprisoned in her wheelchair, staring at the image of her former self and her career (her modelling contracts are cancelled). Once again El Chivo snakes into this subplot, seeing Valeria's poster being brought down. Here, neither El Chivo as an on-looker, nor the viewer are moved by this, remaining indifferent at seeing the final demise of Valeria's modelling career. The film gives an impression of the indifference in life, the characters' lives are part of ours, but they do not impinge on ours. There is a devastatingly crude alienation in this enormous and impersonal city. There is no salvation, all the characters have to fend for themselves in an increasingly hostile and fragile environment. The characters remain imprisoned beneath the shroud of smog, although it is implied that El Chivo does escape and that he finds redemption. The last scene is of El Chivo and Cofi making their way across the derelict and barren outskirts, leaving their pasts behind them and moving into the unknown.

González Iñárritu does not slip into class stereotypes, nor does he glamorize violence, rather he shows it for what it is and the effects that it can have. Mexico City is a complex mix with various substrata interacting with each other. At first glance it appears that wealth and beauty prevail at the top end of the social scale and that cruelty and ugliness are with the poor. However, the same psychological threads run through all the social classes represented and violence is not unique to the poor, rather poverty and wealth mirror each other. In this harsh portrayal of the city there is a complex mix of contradictions where physical, psychological or verbal violence permeates every level of society. The family, or rather the lack of family, is key. Whether rich or poor, the family is dysfunctional, debunking the notion of the nuclear family. Susana's mother is an alcoholic and her mother-in-law silently watches her son beat his wife and her other son seduce his sister-in-law, leading to the destruction of the family unit. Eventually Susana will become a single mother of two. Octavio gives the orders for his own brother to be beaten up and Cofi replaces Ramiro. Daniel abandons his wife and two children for Valeria whose 'son' is Richie. In the case of El Chivo, his strange medley of stray dogs have replaced his real family, only to be destroyed by Cofi. On one level the fragmented and interwoven narrative represents the disintegration of the family unit and on the other the labyrithine chaos of the city.

Although the film's action takes place in the present, or near present, the whole film hinges on memory, either on a distant memory or through the use of flashbacks. Unknowingly all the characters' lives interweave, often through the visual. For example Octavio watching Valeria on a talk show unaware that he is to leave her permanently maimed, El Chivo threatening the gang leader with a machete knife, El Chivo hearing Valeria calling Richie seconds before the fatal crash. Photographs are used as a memory prop for a nostalgic past which no longer exists: a visual metaphor. Snapshots, passport photos and family photos are used as framing devices, counteracting the icons of family life with its dark underside. These photos from the past are not so much about before but about the absences in the present. They reflect on the irrecoverability of the past, on the impossibility of bringing the dead back to life; on the loved one who no longer exists or on that original bond or relationship which has been irretrievably shattered. Daniel sees the photo of his family while he is at the office, El Chivo finds two photos in Octavio's stolen wallet: Octavio and Ramiro, recalling a previous harmony and Octavio and Cofi, the brother having been replaced by the dog. The poster of a pre-crash Valeria, reminding her of her previous beauty which now acts as a catalyst for her spiraling depression. There is also the photo of El Chivo's wife and daughter and the husband/father, and in an attempt to thwart the passing of time El Chivo places photo montages over the image of the other man.

The final impression from this nihilistic film is one of visual and emotional rawness. The emotions are sapped and on leaving the cinema a sense of numbness takes over. Life in the city is an alienating and violent experience. In this "battle of the giants (…) I feel my own fragility (…) running with a beast behind me (…) where no-one hears my voice".

Anna Reid is a lecturer-researcher at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, Cuernavaca, Mexico. ajrcalr@avantel.net