Latin American Film, 2000’s

1. Latin American Film, 2000’s

2. AmoresPerros (Love’s a Bitch) • Director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarrudo, Mexico, 2000 • Hit in Mexico and around the world • Storyline transcends boundaries: fast-paced narrative style • Characters more universal in mores • Debt to slick kind of Hollywood pop cinema 2. Central Theme: Contradictions of cultural modernity in contemporary Latin American society. 3. Not cliched Mexico for tourists but a modern Mexico with cell phones, boom boxes, and fast cars. 4. Won many awards: Main national film award in Mexico and nominated for Academy Award, even though a bad time for Mexican film.

3. Setting of the Film • Depiction of violence embodied in the omnipresent dogs of the title • Mexico City depicted as a place of danger masked by the illusion of modernity • This construction of the setting • serves as a pointed interrogation of the position of Latin America’s increasingly urbanized culture—the slip zone between communities on the margins and mass-mediatized global culture.

4. Script: Guillermo Aniaga Jordon • Captures the violence of contemporary Mexico City • Foregrounds an eccentric style of storytelling and editing • Builds on a soundtrack derived from visual Models such as MTV and Pulp Fiction • Rooted in conflicts and contradictions of rapid cultural change at the end of the 20th Century reeling from decades of corrupt politicians, a demographic explosion, and the not unrelated increase in urban violence.

5. Narrative: Opening • 1. Pre-credit sequence of car chase establishes the tempo of speed and violence • 2. A bloodied injured dog in the back of the car serves as a link to other stories. • 3. Car crash ends with inter-title—Octavio and Susana—a flashback • 4. The crash anchors three interlocking stories. • http://youtu.be/NCOXqoqs54w

6. Octavio’s Story • Set in drab working-class neighborhood • Involves two subplots: a) sexual attraction toward brother’s wife, Susana b) adoption of his brother’s dog, Cofi to use in illegal dog fights and earn money to run off with Susana.

7. Daniel and Valeria • Linked with Octavio’s story by talk show, Today’s People, that features Valeria and her dog Ricci • Daniel is a magazine editor, and Valeria is his mistress model with image of herself selling perfume on a billboard • Daniel leaves wife and children and sets up house with Valeria • Valeria is hit by Octavio in the car crash as she goes to get Champaign to celebrate • Valeria is now wheel-chair bound, since her legs are destroyed (leg amputated after a second fall trying to get her dog Ricci out from under floorboards • Billboard changes at end—an end of her career and dream of idyllic life with Daniel

8. Martin El Chivo • Revolutionary turned paid assassin • Paid to gun down Luis, Gustavo’s partner and half-brother • Instead, kidnaps Luis and ties up Gustavo so they can fight it out • Goes to leave money and message with estranged daughter, Maru • Leaves for a new life in Mexico City with Cofi, whom he rescues from the accident

9. AmoresPerros’s Themes and Tropes • Highlights urban fragmentation and a spiritual desolution rooted in the modern megalopolis • City is both modern and primitive, glamorous television world and animalistic violence outside it • Television feeds fantasies of less fortunate • Title=underscores the condition of the three protagonists (perro=the instictual, animal nature of obsession • Lives crash in all three narratives

10. AmoresPerros’s Cinematic Strategies • Fast paced editing style as in Run Lola Run (1998) • Extreme close-ups to emphasize characters’ mental agitation • Use of soundtrack music emphasizes editing • Transnational context leads to universal themes • Cinematic intertextuality connects film with Pulp Fiction.

11. The Swamp (Lucretia Martel, 2001) Title • Name of town near Bolivian border • Describes mud in which animals are trapped and die • Describes how life is paralyzed and people are resigned to eke out an existence in a foul and putrid atmosphere • Highlights the sultry heat

12. La Mandragora Name: Mecha’s Property • Pepper farm and mansion owned by Mecha, the mother in the main family • Also is the name of a plant (mandrake) which was used as a sedative • Highlights decadence in opening sequence of drunks around a pool • Parallel to ox trapped in the muddy ground • Agony of the ox and of Mecha are watched—ox by children, and Mecha by husband and friends. Only teen daughter and maid help her when she falls.

13. Narrative of The Swamp • Accidents unite two families a) Mecha’s—owner of red pepper farm: has four children and a husband (Gregorio) who (like her) is an alcoholic b) Tali, Mecha’s cousin, a middle class wife to Roberto with four children, one of whom is accident prone 2. According to Martel, “Family is a living and self-sufficient organism where the bodies, apart from their ties to blood, are linked in time, weariness, lunch time, bathrooms, in situations where the body is less exposed to social convention.”

14. Families Contrasted • Talie and Rafael vs. Mecha and Gregorio • Loving Alcoholic and selfish • Stable Unstable • Middle class Land owners • Wishes for Bolivian trip sinister?

15. Themes: Scars and Sex • Children are scarred, both literally and figuratively: a) Joaquin, Mecha’s younger son, lost an eye b) Jose, Mecha’s older son, bruised in a fight over maid, Isabella 2. Attraction/love a) Momiand Isabel b) Veronica and brother, Jose c) Mercedes and Jose/Gregorio

16. Feminine Narration? • Different sides of male characters: • a) objects of desire • b) turbulent agents • c) far from core of story: Jose arouses curiosity, and Rafael emotes unconvincing calm (keeps wife from going to Bolivia by buying school supplies) • 2. Seen from female perspective—set in home where women rule here

17. Other themes • Family: mirror of bourgeois society shattered after years of dirty war, corruption, and economic woes • Nature: Characters disconnected from natural world, in disturbed relationship with nature • Sensuality: soundtrack—almost constant sound of thunder announcing a storm (both literal and figurative), harvest bugs, explosion in Tali’s home when husband won’t talk to her, distorted voices of Tali’s daughters in the fan, squeaking chairs, clanking ice, etc.

18. Style in the swamp • Long sequence shots with motionless portraits contrast with hand-held camera shots • Vision of human body • Mountain sequences • Siesta scenes with brothers and sisters together • Slow passage of hot days beside the stagnant pool • Last line Momi utters, “I didn’t see anything” refers to the Holy Virgin image she seeks, as well as other literal and figurative elements of the film.