Written by Guillermo Arriaga
One needn't recount the myriad accolades that adorn this movie to introduce it as a formidable debut by a director on the rise. Three interwoven stories mesh thematically over heartbreak, love, and loss, honing in on an often innate violence within each. It is in fact this violence, a propelling intensity to the movie, that keeps the film on its feet. Dog fights, robberies, stabbings, murders and a car crash are what keep one watching.
But the movie seems blinded by itself and its own intentions--to create one story out of three. The three stories share almost no points of commonality other than a car crash, and even this wreck feels like a raggedy bit of narrative thread composed only after the three stories were penned seperately.
While the first story, centering on Octavio (played by Gael García Bernal), a teenager in love with his older brother's wife, climaxes with the car crash, the second story, involving Goya Toledo as a supermodel having an affair with a married man, finds its beginning there. The car crash might have just as easily been left out of the third story, focusing on Emilio Echevarría, who gives an outstanding performance as El Chivo, an ex-terrorist-turned-assassin-for-hire whose moral ambiguities reveal greater and greater depth of character as the story goes on.
The stories of Octavio and El Chivo pass along a single dog, a rottweiler, as a symbolic element, which turns out to be a sort of monkey's paw for both men. There's also the theme of brotherhood--the kind most aptly represented by Cain and Abel. A few other parallels finish out a nice mirroring effect between these two main characters and the paths they choose or do not choose, lending further evidence of the glaring weakness in the film: the second story.
The second story has all the elements of the other two: a dog; a couple; love?; heartache; loss. But it also has very little to offer the audience. The characters possess the complexity of paper dolls, their relationship begins stale and disintegrates, and their love is questionable. In short, neither of them are likeable characters for any reason, good or bad, and the story drones on, complete with whining and screaming. As well, the dog (one relegated to this story only) fails to play the same role of significance as the rottweiler in the other two. It might also be a telling sign of where the film's potency lies: there is none of the violence (except for the brief moment of the car crash) in the second story that propels the first and third.
Perhaps, in such instances as Amores Perros, with so much to offer, the question should be asked from now on which is more important: quality of story or a neat idea. In this case, one can't help but think the movie would have been better as two combined tales rather than one. Or, here's an idea, maybe focus on one of the interesting stories (more El Chivo, more Echevarria, please) and make it into a full-length movie that's interesting the whole way through.
