Arriving in a striking 4K transfer after a quarter of a century, Amores Perros remains a forceful, uncompromising film with hybrid genre influences and a tightly wound, non-linear narrative. The film concerns three groups of unrelated characters, but Guillermo Arriaga’s script is never bloated, commanding your attention with high-stakes energy and a cross-genre sensibility that Alejandro González Iñárritu skilfully adapts.
It opens as neo-noir, with stark camerawork and a bloodied getaway car, à la Reservoir Dogs. Then, in a Mexico City slum, we have a telenovela love triangle between Susana, her abusive boyfriend Ramiro and his softer slacker brother, Octavio. The melodrama continues in the second story between Daniel, an affluent media professional, and his glamorous mistress, Valeria, their relationship embodying the fleeting pleasure of beauty and lust.
Lastly, there is El Chivo, a weather-beaten man with a shock of hair, a disheveled suit and a pack of grateful dogs that follow him as he wheels his handcart, scavenging the streets with a knowing look in his eyes. El Chivo is a wandering observer, bridging the film’s characters and class. Amores Perros affords a chapter to each of these three perspectives, yet the film is not episodic and certainly not laboured. The characters loop and collide, literally, in a particularly savage car crash that punctuates the film, aligning the stories into a cohesive tragedy of class, crime and family in Mexico City.
Then there is the film’s transgressive ‘bite’. During its festival run, Amores Perros stirred much controversy with its brutally convincing dog fighting scenes. Close shots and quick edits are instrumental in amplifying the dogs’ fang-bearing brawls, but the animals’ spitting frenzy and slack, lifeless bodies raise questions. The Guardian reported that a ‘very respected’ animal trainer used his own highly trained, muzzled dogs, and that ‘dead’ dogs were in fact tranquilised for short intervals. This will be objectionable to some and a grim dilemma to others, a tension inherent in transgressive art.
The 25th anniversary 4K restoration of Amores Perros will stream exclusively on MUBI from 10 July 2026.
