After an unfortunate, wrenching, emotion-shredding event in one's life, there's nothing like going to see a dark and moody movie to attempt to prove to oneself that there are much worse things one could be going through. One could also start refering to oneself using a number instead of something in the first person, which removes one from the dusty, street-level living of the common schmoe and raises one up above the pain and agony of life.

Neither works.

Amores Perros—translated as "Love's a Bitch"—is the first feature from director Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu. Yes, another first feature. An ambitious first feature. What is it with these people and their ambitious first features? Can't they start with a small romantic comedy and move up from there? Well, we're all the better off for these little Orson Welleses in our midst. Alejandro's Amores Perros is an amazing first movie. It's difficult, draining, and often poetic. It's gritty, it's unflinching, it's complex. In some ways, it's a combination of Traffic and Requiem for a Dream. Both of those movies have specific "drugs are bad and destroy lives" messages, but Amores Perros demonstrates that that's true with love as well. Love is a bitch. Drugs are a bitch. (And like two bitches in a dog fight, you never know who's gonna come out the winner.)

Like Traffic, Amores Perros weaves different stories and characters together using coincidence. The central event is a car crash, eye-poppingly filmed from three different pespectives, which are interespersed throughout the movie. Traffic's very specific goal—to show that drugs touch everyone's lives, often for the worse—is echoed in Amores, where love touches everyone's lives, often for the worse. As for the similarity to Requiem for a Dream, where we see the disastrous effects of drugs, Amores shows us the disastrous effects of love.

While I truly appreciated the artistry of Traffic, I think Amores does a more interesting, off-kilter job of combining the stories. In general, the three main threads are presented as separate segments, but in each, the two others intrude, so no story line is ever isolated from the others. Like, say, Love American Style. Amores also hits you emotionally, like Requiem. In this comparison, though, Requiem wins out for it's sheer power. Amores hits, but is sometimes slow and ponderous. Requiem, ah, Requiem. Can I speak highly enough of thou?

There is another element around which the world of Amores Perros spins, and that's dogs. Dogs are intriguingly used here as both catalysts for and slaves to the action. I'll go into more detail in a sec, but one thing you should know is the dogs are, in general, not treated very well in this movie. The first story right off the bat involves dog fighting, so expect to see dogs bloodied and killed. (You don't really witness any killings. No dogs were harmed, as they so thoughtfully point out in the opening title card. Consider the dogs stunt artists.) I read one review of Amores that said something about the dogs representing how the characters in the movie treat other people in their lives, but I think that's bunk. The dogs are more symbols for the different stories.

Stop reading right here and now if you don't want to know anything about the movie, because I want to explore this love and doggie thing in more detail, which means I need to surrender various important plot points.

The first story revolves around Octavio (a smoldering, intense, and very good Gael García Bernal), a young guy who's in love with his sister-in-law, Susana (a solid and realistic Vanessa Bauche). Octavio's brother, Ramiro, is a violent thief who, he feels, is not fit to be Susana's husband. To get money to run off with Susana and her baby, Octavio begins entering his brother's rottweiler, Cofi, into dog fights. Cofi turns out to be a killer, and Octavio ends up making enough money to provide a decent life for himself and Susana. But Susana ends up running away with Ramiro and the money, and Octavio loses everything he has.

Octavio, like Cofi, is an innocent. Cofi first fights outside the ring in self defense, but by winning in that street battle, he winds up fighting in the ring. Violence becomes his life. Octavio turns to dog fighting to try and defend the woman he loves from his brother, and it becomes his life. The innocents end up turning violent, and violence, of course, turns on them. Octavio's love is so overwhelming that he nearly destroys his life pursuing it. When the love backfires and he's betrayed, Octavio resorts to further violence, which in turn leads to the car crash. Cofi and Octavio are nearly killed, but they survive. Unfortunately, they must live without the comfort of love (for Octavio) and a home (for Cofi).

This was the most interesting storyline to me, maybe because of it's harshness. I'm always a sucker for stories like this, where innocent young people end up being put through the ringer and come out the other side changed. I know most stories of conflict have to do with people passing through tests and changing in the process, but Octavio goes through a very stark, harsh, and unfair test. Those are the most dramatic and interesting kind.

In the second storyline, Daniel, a magazine editor-type guy, ends up leaving his wife and two daughters to live with his true love, supermodel Valeria. Just as they move in together, Valeria is nearly killed in the car crash with Octavio. Her life as she knows it is ruined, and she enters a dark hole that she doesn't feel she can get out of.

Valeria has a little dog of her own who helps her deal with her tragedy when she's alone in her apartment. But the dog ends up chasing a ball into a hole in the floor and refuses to come out. As long as the dog remains under the floor, scampering about with the rats, Valeria and Daniel's lives are dark and moody. Each lashes out at the other in anger and confusion. As you sit watching, you feel they're like the dog in the floor: They could get out if they wanted to, but they can't thanks to the fear and suddenness of their new situation.

Just as things are about to end badly, Daniel rips up more of the floor and finds the little dog near death, just as he'd found Valeria near death, locked in her room, hours earlier. This storyline feels the lightest, the most unnecessary in the movie, but when you see the last scene, the impact and purpose of the segment hit you. Valeria is in her wheel chair, her leg recently amputated thanks to more medical complications. She's staring out the large window of the apartment, crying. The wall of a building opposite, which was covered with a gigantic ad for a perfume for which Valeria was spokesmodel, now carries a "Space Available" sign. She holds her revived dog, taking in this final insult, and Daniel gently places his hands on her shoulders to comfort her. This simple, non-verbal scene shows that Daniel and Valeria have survived their test. But while love does win out here, each character has paid a mighty price to keep it.

Throughout the previous two segments, we get snippets showing a homeless man who wanders the streets with his stray dogs. At one point, he shoots a man through a plate glass window, execution-style, then returns to his life on the street. Strange and mysterious, no? Well in the final segment, we learn what this man is all about.

It turns out he lives the way he does by choice. His dogs have all been rescued from the street and now live with him in his run-down warehouse abode. He's a paid assassin who was once a revolutionary. Decades earlier, this man, El Chivo (played beautifully by Emilio Echevarria), had made a choice to leave his wife and baby daughter to join the revolution and fight for a world he could believe in, one in which he'd be proud to raise his daughter. But the revolution failed, he got arrested, spent time in prison, and became the hit man he is after being released.

El Chivo ends up learning about the death of his wife, and his human feelings begin to resurface. He begins stalking his now-grown daughter, wishing to reunite with her. But he is a wasted man, dirty and cruel, killing people for money. The only pity and kindness he's felt for years is for the dogs he rescues.

It is, in fact, El Chivo's rescue of Cofi from the car crash that sets his path toward one of change. After nursing Cofi back from near death, El Chivo is horrified to find one day that Cofi has killed all his other dogs. The death of his beloved dogs is the trigger for his acknowledgement of the emotions regarding the loss of his wife and daughter. Cofi, the dog who killed for money, slaughtered the life of El Chivo, and the man is kicked into action to salvage his own life. He makes an effort to re-connect with his daughter, but not face-to-face. He instead breaks into her apartment, leaving her tokens of fatherhood: Money, an altered picture placing him at her graduation, and a long, difficult but cleansing message on her answering machine. After this, he heads out to begin a new life, hoping he can return to face his daughter in the future. With him, he takes Cofi. The two former killers walk off toward the horizon over earth scorched black by some unseen fire, out from the hell they were living and, hopefully, into something better.

There are many more themes and characters and moments in Amores Perros, all which connect to give the movie the—ack, I hate to use this word again—epic feel it has. You are sure that many more stories, all connecting together, are waiting to be discovered. Alejandro, whose previous work has been for television and radio, puts his all into this movie. His care and love for the project all shine through, and I think, despite the slow pace in places, he's succeeded in making a moving and, in many ways, unique film. His combination of elements—the dogs, the disparate lifestyles of the characters, the exploration of love in all forms, the bleeding of segments into one another—is daring and successful. I can't wait to see what else he's got up his sleeve. Maybe he'll join Darren Aronofsky in the realm of comic books and do an Amreican featrue film of Fish Police, a comic that really deserves to be brought up from the ashes of the pop culture inferno and celebrated in some way.

Well, shucks to that.

—Steve