AMORES PERROS

From ladies to tramps, a violent car crash unites three sets of Alejandro Gonz?lez In?rritu's auspicious directing debut. “Pulp Fiction,” “Before the Rain” (19th CIFF, 1995) and “Magnolia” marked milestones in the art of time-defying, interlocked, multiple narratives. Now get ready for the next big thing. AMORES PERROS is a bracing, unsparing triptych of irony, outrage, consequences and redemption, with an all-seeing camera that roams from the urban gutters to the junkyards to the luxury high-rises. Young Octavio tries to buy a better life for his abused sister-in-law by entering the family hound Cofi in vicious dog-fighting matches, a blood-soaked subculture (scenes not for the easily disturbed) in which the beast proves all too adept. Middle-aged magazine editor Daniel abandons his wife and daughters for his model-mistress Valeria – and her pet Richie; he will have cause to regret it. A convicted terrorist known as “el Chivo” (the Goat), his ideals gone and his only friends a pack of adopted strays, subsists miserably as a freelance hit man. Changing tone and shifting gears for each segment, the filmmakers let slip the dogs of destiny and depict characters caught in the fangs of misdirected love. (In Spanish with English subtitles)