Amores Perros
Alejandro González Iñárritu · 2000
A car crash in Mexico City intersects three separate stories: a young man trying to escape with his brother's wife, a supermodel's life destroyed by an accident, and a hitman reuniting with the family he abandoned. Iñárritu's debut is a portrait of how violence connects strangers who would never otherwise meet.
Techniques Used
4 techniques identified in this film
Braided Thread Motif
EditingThe use of a repeated visual or narrative element across multiple storylines that creates thematic unity through recurrence.
How this film uses it
The car crash is the film's braiding point — each story leading toward it or emanating from it, the accident the physical event through which three unconnected lives briefly touch before separating back into their private tragedies.
Non-Linear Narrative
NarrativeA story structure that disrupts chronological order to create thematic rather than causal connections between scenes.
How this film uses it
Iñárritu moves between the three stories without chronological respect — the crash appearing at different points in each story's timeline — creating a portrait of Mexico City in which the same moment has completely different meanings depending on whose life it interrupts.
Handheld Cinema Vérité
CinematographyA documentary-influenced shooting style using handheld cameras to create spontaneous, unpolished images that feel observed rather than constructed.
How this film uses it
Rodrigo Prieto shoots Mexico City's streets with an unstable, documentary handheld that puts the audience in the traffic, the tenements, and the dog fights — the city's real texture inseparable from the fictional characters moving through it.
In Medias Res
NarrativeBeginning a story in the middle of its action, then using flashbacks or exposition to fill in the events that led to the opening situation.
How this film uses it
The film opens with the chase that ends in the crash — already in motion, already in crisis — before pulling back to show each story from its beginning, the audience having already seen the destination before understanding the journeys.
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