Cheap Amores Perros (DVD) (Emilio Echevarría, Gael García Bernal) (Alejandro González Iñárritu) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Amores Perros

The events of three different stories are woven together. "Octavio and Susana" revolves around a forbidden love affair and a frenzied car chase in which one of the cars is carrying a severely wounded dog. The chase eventually ends in a horrific car crash. "Daniel and Valeria" is a tale about a television producer (Alvaro Guerrero) who leaves his family for a model and actress (Goya Toledo). Their romantic bliss is disrupted by the disappearance of the woman's dog and her involvement in the car crash from the previous story. "El Chivo and Maru" is about a mysterious man (Emilio Echevarria) who is much more dangerous than his run-down appearance would suggest.

"Amores Perros" is just too long and too disjointed. It is ambitious filmmaking in the sense that it abandons all pretenses at conventional storytelling, but the loose connections between the separate stories are just too loose to create a solid, satisfying narrative tapestry. Its morally-ambiguous characters are a welcome departure from the goody-goody stock characterizations that occupy too many Hollywood productions these days, but they do not exist to further any coherent theme or story. Rather, they are there merely to produce sensation. "Amores Perros" is admirable for capturing the stark nature and feel of the darker aspects of the world we live in and for its unflinching and sometimes dazzling filmmaking craftsmanship. However, the film does not come together when all is said and done and fails to leave behind any kind of lasting impression.

Love and Dogs
the story of a street smart working class boy who falls in love with his brother's wife, a successful fashion model who's having an affair with a married businessman, and a lonely vagrant who wants to contact a daughter he hasn't seen in years. These three characters never interact with each other and their stories are only connected through a terrible car crash that changes their lives for ever. The only thing these people have in common is that they own dogs, and their relationships with their pets are as telling as their relationships with other humans. The film moves from the luxury flats to the slums of Mexico City, demonstrating that human passions have little to do with social and economic circumstances. This is an extremely disturbing and violent film, but it never feels excessive or exploitative. Violence is depicted as ugly and pointless, sometimes fortuitous but never cool or glamorous, and it makes people and animals suffer unnecessarily.

Alejandro González Iñárritu's film is destined to become a classic, it does for contemporary Mexico City (or any other large Latin American city) what Taxi Driver did for mid 70's New York. A solid script, inventive and hyper realistic direction, perfectly timed editing and brilliant performances make Love's a Bitch and extraordinary film, a perfect example of how visceral and moving cinema can really be. This is an intelligent and thought provoking movie that will surely be appreciated by anyone who has grown tired of the seemingly endless flow of escapist offerings released every week.

Finally, dog lovers like myself will be reassured to know that this DVD features a short on how the dog actors were trained and looked after and didn't get hurt or mistreated in any way.

Love and Dogs
Emilio Echevarria makes one of the most powerful Mexican films to be viewed in US American cinemas to date. This three-part film follows three stories and the interwoven themes of love and dogs. The first story, "Octavio and Susana" features the at once grittily violent and tragically romantic story of Octavio and his sister-in-law, Susana. Octavio chooses dog fighting as his path to liberate his love Susana and himself from their destitute state of servitude to Octavio's family. The story ends with a bloody crash that brings us to the next story of "Daniel and Valeria," and we are harshly jolted by the contrast between this beautiful model and her apartment overlooking her billboard and where we left off in Octavio and Susana's bloody lives. Echevarria even foreshadows this contrast earlier in the film when Valeria appears in the background on a television talkshow in the livingroom of Ocatvio's friend prior to a final dogfight. However, Echevarria cleverly turns our concerns on their head, and the most superficially perfect of lives becomes the most sad. We are left feeling empty and helpless when "El Chivo and Maru" ties all three stories together, by at once showing dogs as our loves, our enemies, our weaknesses. This film is gritty and real; the cinematography is at once documentarylike, and beautifully crafted. The shift in time and space suggests the ties between love and dogs, a theme that carries us through the end of the film. You will not be able to see this film once; multiple viewings are required in order to capture all of the beauty and pain.