Line #19 Film/AmoresPerros


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11	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/amores-perros_3484.jpg]]
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13	''Amores Perros'' is a 2000 Mexican drama film directed by Creator/AlejandroGonzalezInarritu. It is both his directorial debut and the first in his "Trilogy of Death", followed by ''Film/TwentyOneGrams'' and ''Film/{{Babel}}''. The title translates roughly in English to "Love's a Bitch", though WordOfGod states that this is not what the title is supposed to mean. It is sometimes referred to as "the Mexican ''Film/PulpFiction''", although if you're expecting the film to be in any way similar to that film except in terms of structure, you're out of luck.
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15	The film tells three stories each revolving around a different person or set of persons in Mexico City; interconnected via a common event consisting of a car crash. In the process, it shows how the lower, middle and upper classes in Mexico interact. Each of the stories also involves dogs in some way.
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17	The first story, "Octavio y Susana", stars Creator/GaelGarciaBernal and Vanessa Bauche as the title characters. Susana is Octavio's sister in law, but Octavio is in love with her and resents the way her husband/his brother, Ramiro, treats her. Enticing her to flee with him to start a new life, Octavio enters his dog, Cofi, in the dog-fighting circuit where it quickly becomes a champion, scoring him big bucks with which to do it.
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19	The second story, "Daniel y Valeria", stars Álvaro Guerrero and Goya Toledo. Daniel is a successful magazine publisher who leaves his family to live with supermodel Valeria. Valeria hurts her leg when Octavio's car collides with hers; confining her to a wheelchair for a few weeks. In Daniel and Valeria's new apartment, Valeria's dog Richie disappears down a hole in the floorboards. At night, they can hear it whimpering, and Valeria implores Daniel to try and rescue it. The two get into a fight, and Valeria resorts to trying to rescue the dog herself. Big mistake...
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21	The third and final story, "El Chivo y Maru", stars Emilio Echevarría and Lourdes Echevarría. El Chivo (The Goat) appears on the surface to be a homeless man who cares for stray dogs. In reality, he is a [[ProfessionalKiller hitman]] who got involved with a guerrilla movement and thus abandoned his daughter, Maru, many years ago. He and his wife agreed to tell their daughter that he was dead. El Chivo is hired by a man to kill his business partner, but as he is about to do it, he is interrupted by the car crash. He then learns that the target is the client's half-brother, and decides to throw a spanner into the gears...
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23	It was nominated for the MediaNotes/AcademyAwardForBestForeignLanguageFilm.
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25	!!This film provides examples of:
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27	* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Susana is verbally and physically abused by her husband (who also happens to be a robber), yet in the end she chooses him [[spoiler: (even after his death)]] over Octavio.
28	* AnimalMetaphor: Dogs underline the central theme of the movie; love.
29	** Octavio sees "el Cofi" as a means to win money and therefore Susana's affections.
30	** Richie serves as Valeria's last tenous connection to her own sanity after the car crash takes away everything in her life.
31	** El Chivo rescues and cares for multiple dogs. However, [[spoiler: it's until he forgives Cofi (and by extension himself) that he realizes he can be a better man and eventually reconnect with his daughter. His renaming of Cofi as "el Negro" can be seen as the start of a new life for both him and the dog.]]
32	* BeastlyBloodsports: Savage dogfight scenes.
33	* BittersweetEnding: Of El Chivo's story. [[spoiler: After forgiving Cofi (and by extension himself), he realizes he can be a better man that can eventually be part of his daughter's life. Just ''not yet''. WordOfGod even states that he eventually met with her years later and he's now a grandfather.]]
34	* BlackAndGrayMorality: None of the main characters could be considered to be "good" people, but they contrast with the definitely "black" antagonists.
35	** Daniel cheated on his wife and abandoned her and his little daughters to be with Valeria, while Valeria dated Daniel knowing that he was a married man. Daniel still supports Valeria through her entire convalescence, and Valeria is greatly suffering because of the accident.
36	** El Chivo is an unscrupulous hitman and thief, but also deeply loves his daughter. Furthermore, he sincerely cares for the dogs he rescues.
37	** Octavio gets into dog-fighting, but only as a means to gain Susana's affections. He becomes more "black" as the movie progresses and thanks to different circumstances.
38	** Ramiro, Jarocho and Gustavo are definitely black in morality; they have no redeeming qualities of their own.
39	* CainAndAbel:
40	** Octavio is the Abel to Ramiro's Cain, competing for Susana's affections; while Octavio only gets into dog-fighting as a way to get the love of Susana and provide a better life for her and her children, Ramiro is a brutish thug that verbally, physically abuses and cheats on Susana, doesn't care for the well-being of his children and is also a robber. [[spoiler: It is inverted when Octavio hires some thugs to brutalize Ramiro]].
41	** El Chivo lampshades it when he learns the relationship between Gustavo (his client) and the man he was hired to kill: both are middle-brothers.
42	* CareerEndingInjury: Because of the accident, Valeria loses her modeling contract with a prominent beauty products firm; [[spoiler: and later due to complications, she ends up losing her leg, effectively ending her modeling career]].
43	* CripplingOverspecialization: After Valeria and Daniel move in together he asks her to keep an eye on a meal he's cooking, and she jokingly responds that she doesn't even know how to boil an egg, [[{{Foreshadowing}} meaning that she only knows how to be a pretty supermodel]]. After the crash, she becomes bedridden and becomes more unhinged as she only leaves the apartment for medical checkups, and her agent tells her that the contract expired and the perfume brand decided not to renew, but he'll negotiate for her triumphant return to modeling when she recovers. At the very end of the segment, after she returns from the hospital [[spoiler: with an amputated leg due to complications of her falling off her wheelchair to look for Richie who was trapped under the floorboards, she looks at the "for rent" billboard where her perfume ad was she breaks down as she realizes her modeling career is over and [[DownerEnding she has to rely on Daniel, who is now regretting abandoning his family for her]]]].
44	* DaddyHadAGoodReasonForAbandoningYou: Deconstructed. [[spoiler: El Chivo believed that his crusade for a better world superseded his familial duties, so he abandoned his baby daughter. After 20 years in jail, he came to understand his mistake, but was filled with so much shame that both his ex-wife and himself agreed to let his daughter think he was long dead.]]
45	* DeadGuyJunior: [[spoiler: Susana decides to name her unborn child after her husband, Ramiro, and this is used to show her choice of him over Octavio.]]
46	* DidntThinkThisThrough: [[spoiler: Octavio hires some thugs to beat-up Ramiro after the latter attempts to blackmail a cut out of Cofi's fights, and also as payback for his abuse of Susana. He forgets that, at the end of the day, Susana is still Ramiro's wife, so she escapes with Ramiro when his life is threatened]].
47	* DownerEnding: On the first two stories:
48	** Octavio [[spoiler:ends up in a car crash, that kills his best friend and leaves him severely injured. El Chivo steals all the money he had bet on the final dogfight, and after all this, Susana reveals she will name her unborn child after Ramiro (who is now dead), meaning she chooses her abusive husband over him.]]
49	** Valeria [[spoiler:has to have her leg amputated, effectively ending her modeling career. Before that, Daniel starts to regret leaving his wife and daughters for Valeria after seeing how unstable she is.]]
50	* TheFarmerAndTheViper: After El Chivo saves Cofi from the car crash and nurses it back to health, [[spoiler: it then kills all of the dogs of his house]].
51	* HyperlinkStory: The thread connecting the three main stories is a car crash involving the protagonists.
52	* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler: Ramiro, in his first bank robbery he made the mistake of mugging a cop, then the latter's partner appears behind Ramiro and shoots him in the back]].
53	* LoveHurts:
54	* MoralityPet: Literally in El Chivo's dogs (as the only living beings he offers some kind of kindness to) and figuratively in his daughter Maru [[spoiler: with whom he seeks to reconnect after abandoning her as a baby.]]
55	* NeutralFemale: Susana knows that staying with Jerkass supreme Ramiro is the worst possible option, but even when presented with a way out, she refuses to abandon him. She also never decisively rejects Octavio's romantic advances, and even has sex with him two times. [[spoiler: It's only until Ramiro dies that she flat-out rejects Octavio.]]
56	* NonActionGuy: El Chivo's client, Gustavo. [[spoiler: When el Chivo offers him an opportunity to kill his own middle-brother (the guy that he wants dead), he finds himself unable to.]]
57	* NeverBringAKnifeToAGunFight: Inverted, somehow Octavio manages to stab an armed Jarocho in front of his mooks.
58	* NotSoDifferentRemark: El Chivo chooses to not kill Cofi - even after the latter kills all of his dogs - once he sees on the dog a reflection of his own life as a cold-hearted killer.
59	* ProfessionalKiller: El Chivo. He's efficient enough to be hired by judicial policemen and their friends.
60	* RuleOfSymbolism: Valeria and Daniel's apartment in their segment. At the beginning, the apartment looks well furnished and elegantly made with it's hardwood floors, [[{{Foreshadowing}} which collapses and makes a hole]], and after the crash there's a helium Mylar balloon that says "I love you" tied to the bed. After Richie, Valeria's dog, gets trapped under the floorboards, and her agent says that he'll negotiate a renewal for her contract when she gets better, the balloon becomes de-inflated, and they make more holes on the floor trying to get Richie out, and their relationship becomes even more tenuous, with screaming matches becoming common. At the end of their segment Daniel brings Valeria back from the hospital [[spoiler: with an amputated leg, and the floor still in shambles. She breaks down when she sees her perfume ad replaced by a "this space available" billboard, effectively symbolizing that [[DownerEnding her career as a supermodel and the only life she knew where effectively over]]]].
61	* StalkerWithoutACrush: El Chivo towards his daughter; he even breaks into her house [[spoiler:twice, the second time near the end of the film in order to leave her all his money, a picture of him and recording a farewell message on her answering machine]].
62	* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: [[spoiler: El Chivo was a guerrillero that abandoned his family to try to secure a better world; unfortunately that involved multiple acts of terrorism that eventually landed him on jail]].
63	* WeaponForIntimidation: Early in the movie El Chivo backs down El Jarocho, a thug at least half his age without saying a word and while holding a Machete.

Context Film / AmoresPerros