I had first seen Innaritu’s Mexican film ‘Amores Perros’ when I was studying cinema in high school. I was immediately impressed by the structure of the narrative. It was definitely unlike anything I had seen before. Though Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ also showcases parallel storylines, ‘Amores Perros’ is unique in the sense that the rawness in the content, composition and the movement in the shots makes the plot seem believable and real.
Innaritu and his editors, Luis Carballar and Fernando Perez Unda, constantly jump back and forth between scenes which interferes with the continuity of the story. However, this technique does not impede the flow of the story, but rather works in favor of carrying it forward. Since there are three main sub-stories in ‘Amores Perros,’ we see how the events within those stories unfold and eventually (and literally) “collide” into one another forming a common connection.
The opening scene of ‘Amores Perros’ begins with the camera facing out into the streets of Mexico city while a car is speeding to reach an unknown destination. A series of close-ups reveal the face of Octavio, one of the protagonists, a large dog bleeding profusely on the back seat of his car and another man who is frantically trying to save the dog. The camera then looks out through the back of the car and we see a large yellow truck chasing Octavio’s car, interweaving through traffic. There are a few other shots of wheels turning, Octavio cursing while trying to escape being shot at and the other cars on the road. We barely have time to register who these people are before we hear a sudden, loud crash, followed by some chaotic imagery in which we can barely make out another dog and a young woman in her car.
The car crash in the scene described above is the one that is shown over and over again during the course of the film and inter-locks, as we later learn, the lives of the three main characters in the three main sub-stories.
