The film we are going to talk about today is the debut of Alejandro González Iñárritu in 2000 - Love is a Dog Lady.
As the saying goes, a good name is half the success of the article, if it is an exam, then the translation of the film not only did not get a score, but may also deduct 50 points.
The translated title of this film is translated from the English name "Love's a Bitch", which sounds like a satire on love, but in fact, after watching it, you will find that love is not the core proposition of this film. My preferred translation is "man, love, dog."
The Mexican director made a splash with his shots, and after the film was released, he won more than a dozen international awards, making him famous, and then creating excellent films such as "Birdman" and "The Wilderness Hunter".
The film comes up with a car accident.
Two young people drove to avoid the pursuit of the rear, a large black dog in the car was bleeding unceasingly, and the director exuded a "crazy temperament" in this section.
The fast-paced editing and shaky shots all bring people a sense of uneasiness that overflows the screen. Faced with this situation, the man driving the car ran a red light without authorization, which led to a car accident.
In the other car, there seems to be a woman calling for help, and the scene is very chaotic.
The film is made up of three different stories, using a segmented narrative mode, and it is this car accident that makes them related. When each story is the main body in turn, it will overlap the information of the other two stories, which makes the whole film full of "puzzle" fun, so that the narrative will not break, and at the same time increase the suspense of the story.
The first story tells that the young Otavio fell in love with his sister-in-law Susanna and wanted to elope with Susanna, Otavio was very motivated, he found that his dog was flying high and fierce, which made him think of fighting dogs to make money.
Sure enough, Goofy, the big black dog, was very angry, and through dog fighting, Ortavio saved a large amount of money for elopement and handed it over to Suzanne to take care of.
Who knows, Suzanne then rolled up the money and her husband left, and the Otavio people were both rich.
In desperation, he decided to do a big vote, in the dog fighting arena, the opponent disregarded the rules and shot Atho, Otavio stabbed his opponent with a knife in a hurry, and began to flee, which happened at the beginning of the movie.
The director makes a lot of use of "short-throw lenses" in this section, and the angle of view is larger than that of ordinary focal lengths, and the edges of the picture are even distorted. Highlight the uneasiness of the city of Mexico.
(Daniel and Valeria)
The protagonist of the second story is the rising star model Valeria, whose boyfriend Daniel is a husband who recently divorced his wife Juliet and moved out to buy a house with her.
Daniel bought the apartment, but didn't have the money left to fix the big hole in the ground. Two people, you and me, the feelings are very strong, until one day, Valeria took her dog Mickey out of the house, just happened to encounter a car accident.
That's right, the parties to the car accident at the beginning of the film are both Otavio and Valeria.
After some time, Valeria was discharged from the hospital, and while she was playing with Mickey, Mickey burrowed into the broken hole and let the two call, and Mickey did not respond.
Mitch is lost, the injury on his leg is not good, his job will not be guaranteed, and under the triple pressure, Valeria and Daniel's emotions are tormented, and the two break out and have a big fight.
At the end of the story, Valeria is amputated, Daniel carries Mitch back home with Mitch, the poster belonging to Valeria outside the window is replaced, Daniel just holds Valeria, and the two do not speak.
The third story is called ("The Goat" and Mary),
The tramp goat was a professional killer who was a university teacher in his youth, then abandoned his wife and daughter to join a left-wing organization as a guerrilla, and then went to prison and became this sloppy appearance.
He was given a task, and while tracking his target, he happened to be in that car accident.
He went up to help the crowd open the car door, took the money from Otavio's pocket, and saved Goofy, who had been thrown on the side of the road.
Who expected Goofy to stay in the dog fighting environment, wild and difficult to tame, actually went crazy to bite other stray dogs, the goat was angry and angry, but in the end he did not have to kill Goofy.
In fact, Goofy is like him, in the past experience, it has long been unsuitable to live in a normal group, can only live on the edge of a city, and Mexico, a mixed city, just gives him a place for marginal people like him.
The goats took off their coats, packed themselves up, took a clean and decent picture, and left a message for their daughter.
But in the end, he could not wait for his daughter, so he had to start wandering again.
There are many things to express in this film, and I will only talk about my opinions below.
First of all, there is a core image in each story, and this is, of course, the "dog".
Dogs in this film can be said to be the epitome of Mexico,
Born at the bottom of the high fly,
Glamorous Mickey,
and a group of homeless stray dogs.
Goofy can't adapt to normal life and frantically bites the same kind,
Mickey lives well, but he doesn't want to come out under the floor,
There is also a group of stray dogs that are surrounded by humans and eventually bite to death,
The dog is at the mercy of its owner and threatened by the environment and the same kind, and the director has no obvious emotional tendencies in the film, does not deliberately pity one party, and does not deliberately suppress which party, in which everyone is involuntarily, like a group of people who have ups and downs in life.
Then there's "violence," violence that fills the film, dogfighting, assassination, robbery, the emergence of these violent elements, which, in my opinion, is a failure of communication.
At the bottom, violence is seen as a way of communication, people want to communicate, but ordinary communication failure can only use coercive means, and the "reconciliation" between Gustavo and his brother at the end of the film can be counted as a successful model of communication, and the perpetrator of the goat's violence, in the end, did not kill two people, but also symbolized that he gave up violence.
But this success is forced by the goat, and the two sides of the communication are also the upper echelons of society, and when the bottom cannot communicate with the upper levels, there will be violence.
Closely related to "violence" is the proposition of "love", in which the characters are all lacking in love, and Mexico in the 70s was turbulent. In such a society, everyone seems to live under the hot pedals, and the emotional thing is crumbling.
Among them, Valeria and Daniel are the most able to feel the emotion of "love", although the love process of the two is not glorious, but you can feel the flow of love between them, the two people are attracted to each other, breaking through the world's heavy obstacles to come together, before they began to enjoy the fruits of love, all this was immediately ruined by a car accident.
In this paragraph, I think the director is discussing "After losing the skin of love, what is left in life?" Valeria sat at the window, watching the glory of the past pass, leaving the two men snuggled up to each other to keep warm.
In general, although this film is the director's debut work, helplessly, this translation name is too rushed, but throw away the translation name, from all aspects can be called a masterpiece, really worth a look.
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