This Spanish movie from Mexico , can be at best described as a slice of life (though superficially it sounds weird). People in North Americas, Europe may be unaware of the walks of life, this film portrays as Dog fights, violent environment that passes of as almost being normal, illicit relationship in a family. These can be regarded as a fine example of backtracking, non-linear narration. This screenplay can instantly strike the chord with Indian cinema followers, when they think of YUVA, in this genre, where the movie begins to unfold from an incident, and then goes on to fill the storyline in parallel about the 3 lead characters. What comes below is only an attempt to scratch the surface of the mould of these main characters and their environment. They are all interconnected in a car crash, from where the screenplay excess of the positive order begins to reign.

From the moment, things start rolling on the screen, you’ll know the director means business. I mean, you see a speeding car. The driver checks his rear-view mirror now and then, possibly, running away from somebody or something. On the back seat, there is a wounded savage dog. Inside the car, there is dark blood splattered all over. A brief moment later, lives of three total strangers entangle pretty strongly and get changed forever. It is some starter scene from this Mexican flick directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.

What’s more interesting is the most unusual comfort level in the handling of metaphors to connect trivial sub-plots to the main plot. Like this one, where one of the main characters is disabled after an accident and finds it tough going through the ‘acceptance’ phase while her pet falls and gets trapped beneath the wooden floor and is unable to get out. Then, there is a contract killer who repents after witnessing the horrific scene where one of his dogs had hurt all of his other pet dogs living with it in the same home.

Finally, its all about perception of things. Right or wrong becomes solely the character’s point of view, as the movie is all about how a set of characters would react and respond to certain circumstances. So, you may find most of the events in the movie hard-hitting, as the characters are exposed to brutal truths. There is one such sequence, where, a Spanish song ‘Lucha de gigantes…’ (roughly translates to ‘Clash of giants…’) played in the background while two events are juxtaposed. One is an illicit sex scene and the other her husband being violently attacked by a gang of thugs. Both the events are sliced and shown in pieces all through the song. It ends like, the mating couple climax. Cut. The guy being attacked bleeds profusely. Cut.

All said, seems the dish on the plate is heavy, even before we haven’t even got into the lives of the people from different section of society, this movie portrays. The one term that is blatant from this work from Alejandro González Iñárritu is stark/harsh reality. It would be a miss, if I didn’t mentioned that, all over, one could find human betrayal sprinkled.

The pointers leading us to this art can be found here and here.