Being Tough Won't Make You Smart.

I do believe my initial viewing of Amores Perros came after Y Tu Mamá También, and was probably as a direct result of my love for the latter. Don't ask me to choose between them. It's like asking to choose your favourite child.


Amores Perros (Love's A Bitch - I like the Spanish original better) is the debut feature from director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who went on to 21 Grams and Babel, as well as the debut feature for writer (and collaborator on all of Iñárritu's features thus far completed) Guillermo Arriaga, who has also written and directed Blindness since his falling out with Iñárritu.

As notable as the introduction of the writing and directing talent was the introduction of Gael García Bernal, in the role of Octavio. His blistering performance in the first segment of the film completely draws you into the world that he is constantly running within - his fear always shows through his bravado always just enough to let you know that, really, he isn't in this for the same reasons as everyone else. He's scared.


But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves.


The film is structured into three distinct but overlapping stories, bound in the middle by a car crash. Octavio and his friend are making money from dogfighting in order that Octavio can run away with his sister-in-law, who he is in love with yet is being beaten by her husband, Octavio's husband. They get themselves into a spot of bother and BAM, car crash. So ends that story (for the most part - it's revisited at the end.)


Meanwhile, model Valeria (Goya Toledo) is having an illicit affair with a magazine (editor? publisher?) Daniel (Álvaro Guerrero.) She ducks out to get some wine and BAM, car crash. The story follows her rehabilitation from horrible fractures and her mental undoing as her dog disappears under the floorboards and more medical problems ensue.


Lastly, El Chivo (Emilio Echevarría) is a former con, now almost homeless, an ex-bum being thrown criminal jobs by a crooked cop. He is set up for an assassination and then BAM, car crash. The dog Octavio had been carrying is now in his care (he's apparently a mammoth dog lover), and things begin to take him a little bit longer. Plus, he's trying to reconnect with his daughter, who is under the impression that he died when he actually went to prison decades earlier.


That's the basic gist of it. I don't really want to give away any plot points beyond what I've already done (there are probably spoilers already - deal with it) so I'm going to leave it at those very rudimentary breakdowns of the three storylines. They all link up in more ways than the car crash and the dog element, however. Oh, don't worry, there are SO many more layers happening here it hurts.


The acting is uniformly. The concept is brilliant as a script and perfectly executed on the screen. Tonally, the three are very different, but this works perfectly - lives are all very different, and as a demonstration of how one random incident can affect people in very different ways it is powerfully effective. The cinematographical changes tie in with the tone, though very subtly - Rodrigo Prieto (who went on to an Oscar nom for Brokeback Mountain, amongst much other terrific work on a number of films) captures it stunningly.


I really don't have a bad word to say about it. Seriously, these Mexicans (and Fernando Meirelles, who is Brazilian) are amazing. It hurts me. That region (a broad generalisation of two large countries, I know, but get over it) produced some of the most phenomenal films of the last few decades in the space of a few years. I don't know what's in the water, but maybe I need to move there next. 5 stars.

God Indeed

Yesterday evening, post nap and pre sleepy-sleep time, I took it upon myself to raid the DVD collection sitting in the living room and belonging to my housemate in the hope of finding something entertaining that might kill those couple of awake hours inevitable between bouts of rest. There were a number of titles that elicited a reaction, but ultimately that which won out was the incredible City Of God (or Cidade de Deus to all ye purists.)

It's a film I have seen before (once? Twice? Does it matter?) and remember from the first instant loving. The first Fernando Meirelles film I saw (and can somebody PLEASE tell me how to pronounce his last name - I'm quite sure I've spent the last seven years fucking it up in an almighty fashion) grabbed me by whatever was hanging loose and pulled me rudely. It's an incredible film, truly. I'm not making this up. The IMDb Top 250 ranks it at number 16 (where is the hash key on a British keyboard? It's taken me 9 months to realise I know where it is...), it was nominated for four Oscars (Director, Editing, Cinematography and Adapted Screenplay - why it didn't receive a Foreign Language nomination is baffling) and is one of those films everyone who has seen it seems to truly admire.

It's the story of the slums of Rio de Janeiro, the rise (and fall) of the leader Lil Zé, and the escape of eventual photographer Rocket, apparently based on true events. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what makes this story fantastic. The narrative timeline cuts around as Meirelles and writer Bráulio Mantovani tell different people's stories, all linked by an otherwise linear voiceover from the aforementioned Rocket - it's almost an exercise in stream of consciousness digression - but does not in any way jar or confuse the viewer. It's an expert manner of communicating the story, vastly different to that used by, say, Guillermo Arriaga in 21 Grams, which seems to want to alienate the viewer, and even his Amores Perros, where the three interlinking stories to not actually directly combine. The individual characters and storylines are strong independently, but also when interlinked. The performances (primarily from non-actors or unknown actors) and stunning, considering.

VIsually it is much more than a feast. It's a Heston Blumenthal feast. It's all of Heston Blumenthal's feasts, twice, with all of the hottest people in the wold serving you. Naked. The way the camera zooms quickly on shots; the way it is unafraid to focus on something otherwise not the focus of the shot; the colours and light; the way it neither raises up the slums and the City of God as an alternate paradise, nor degrades it so that pity the residents for its mere physicality (rather you pity them for the goings-on). Everything works. You even start to admire the trigger-happy Lil Zé (like, seriously, trigger-happy. No first person computer combat game can match the trigger-happiness of Lil Zé) for the control he manages to exert.

I don't know how I can even go on praising this film. It is, pure and simple, one of the best films I've ever seen. Even though I don't think I'd seen it in the better part of six years, it was still a film that I would frequently rattle off as very high on my list. Now, I think, it shall be one of the first films that I rattle off, rather than one I tack onto the end.

5 stars. I want to give it 6, but I think that would just make my whole rating system farcical. And I think it's too early on to start doing that to myself.

GO AND SEE IT!