Love is a Bitch

A lot of people have been egging me to watch Amores Perros ( which translates "Love is a Bitch", I guess) although I procured a copy of a pirated DVD a few years ago, it wasn't until today that I finally had the temptation to watch it. The movie will run for 2 hours and 33 minutes. But it took me a longer time to watch it. It was a difficult movie to watch. It's gripping, haunting, disturbing, morbid,  leaving the viewer in baited breath with every brutal and violent portrayal of life in the streets of Mexico City. I started watching it around 4pm and up till now, 10:42 PM, I am struggling towards the next half of the story as I had to excuse myself once in a while and regurgitate each scene of the movie and of course check on my FB stats (ha-ha). It is a shattering drama with no fuss, sans the candy-coated lines nor a promise of a Happily Ever After. It's all hard-feed bits about real life, no bullshit ... no consideration for faint-hearted viewers (like me?). Amores Perros, profane and profound, stars Gael Garcia Bernal (Octavio) a street punk determined to elope with his sister-in law. He got hooked with dog-fighting to earn the bucks to establish a life with Susanna who later ran away with her husband instead of him. Secret lovers Valeria and Daniel, decided to live together (despite the fact that Daniel is married & Valeria is a model at the height of her career). Things went bad whenValeria got into a car accident (the chasing scene with Bernal) which left her paralyzed and despondent which eventually contributed to a sour relationship with her partner, Daniel. A dog, Richie, played a vital role between the two as Valeria (with strong attachment to the dog) totally went berserk when Richie descended into a hole on the floorboard and never came back for days. Then their relationship began to crumble. Funny how a single predicament, in this case, a dog stuck under a floorboard, can lead to such pressing matters as questions of affection on both side. The 3rd part of this neo-noir trilogy covers the life of El Chivo, a bedraggled dog lover who was once a school teacher who got into activist movements and was imprisoned for 20 years making him an estranged husband and father to his 2 year-old daughter. El Chivo was hired to kill someone who turned out to be the client's half-brother. In the end El Chivo kidnapped both, tied them up and left them to decide their fate by leaving a gun behind as he slowly disappear from their lives. Well I will save myself the exhaustion of writing down what this movie is all about. I never had the knack for writing a synopsis but this movie totally blew me off that i'll have to make an exception, so pardon me if I am not making any sense.  Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu concocts one unforgettable movie that will leave each viewer scarred beyond repair. Love, truly is a bitch. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to lick my wounded heart till I recover from the emotional weight from watching this.