23 - Amores Perros (Love’s a Bitch, 2000), Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Summary

Cast

Octavio, played by Gael García Bernal

Susana, played by Vanessa Bauche

Daniel, played by Alvaro Guerrero

Valeria, played by Goya Toledo

Jorge, played by Humberto Busto

Luis Miranda Solares, played by Jorge Salinas

Ramiro, played by Marco Pérez

Gustavo Garfias, played by Rodrigo Murray

Leonardo, played by Jose Sefamí

El Chivito, played by Emilio Echeverría

Andrés, played by Ricardo Dalmacci

Crew

Executive Producers: Martha Sosa Elizondo, Francisco González Compeán

Photography: Rodrigo Prieto

Production Designer: Brigitte Broch

Wardrobe: Gabriela Diaque

Casting Director: Manuel Teil

Original Music: Gustavo Santaolalla

Production Director: Tita Lombardo

Editors: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Luis Carballar, Fernando Pérez Unda Audio Design: Zeta Audio by Martín Hernández

Musical Supervisor: Lynn Fainchtein

Associate Producers: Raúl Alvaro Ferrer, Guillermo Arriaga Jordan, Pelayo Gutiérrez, Mónica Lozano

Awards

BAFTA winner, The Orange British Academy Film Award, Best Film not in the English Language, 2000

Winner, Critics’Week, International Film Festival, Cannes, 2000

Winner, Film Festival, Bogotá, 2000

Winner, Chicago International Film Festival, 2000

Winner, São Paolo International Film Festival, 2000

Nominee, Best Foreign Film, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,

Hollywood, 2000

Plot

The film opens with a car chase, Octavio and his friend are being pursued by a gang in a truck wielding a gun, and have a dog bleeding to death on the back seat. Car crash; the woman in the other car is screaming to get out. Cuts to a dog fight in which Jarocho’s dog wins, and then to the house in which Susana and Ramiro live with Ramiro’s mother and Ramiro’s brother, Octavio. Susana accidentally lets the dog out, Cofi, and it kills Jarocho’s dog. Jarocho asks for Alejandro’s dog in exchange, but he refuses. Chivito pulls out a gun and shoots someone in the back sitting in a restaurant. Daniel and his wife, Julieta, come home; the phone rings but nobody’s there. Susana tells Octavio that she is pregnant with Ramiro’s child; Octavio confesses his love for his sister-in-law, Susana. Ramiro and his friend rob a pharmacy. It soon becomes clear that what we are seeing is not cross-cutting so much as flashbacks to different scenes from different people’s lives. We reconstruct Octavio’s life as he begins to win money with his dog, Cofi, and tries to persuade Susana to run off with him.