'Amores Perros' translates to 'Love's a Bitch'.  This Mexican film tells three 
appropriately tragic and frustrating love stories.  Playing the pun throughout, 
dogs are central to each of the three tales.

The three stories come together in a fateful car crash that serves as the end of 
one and the beginning of the other two.

Each story chronicles a different type of love.  The first shows young love, 
violent and passionate.  The second, love in a relationship, affectionate, but 
potentially tedious and heart wrenching.  Finally, the third considers familial 
love and betrayal.

Alejandro I?urritu develops each story and requisite symbolism thoroughly, which 
is commendable.  But, frankly, by the third episode my stamina wanes.  Perhaps, 
I've been drawn so far into these love stories that I become as tired and 
frustrated as their characters.  Or maybe the pace of the film is just awkward.  
Personally, I think it's a bit of both.  While I?urritu does absorb the viewer, 
I believe his intention was to convey, not instill, the frustrations of damaged 
love. I realize this is a fine line to draw.  Maybe I took the stories to heart, 
maybe the subtitles contributed to that.  The excitement of young, youthful love 
is so strong in the first story.  Through stylized camera work and intense 
dogfight footage the pace is set high. The second tale descends into the trials 
of a couple who move in to a new apartment together.  The violence has left the 
love, but the struggle lives on.  She in depression, he in frustration.  By the 
third story, I've got nothing left.  I don't care about the betrayals of a 
father.  It's too late, my energy has gone.

American cinema doesn't employ non-literal visual and thematic symbols very 
often. (David Lynch is a notable exception.) 'Amores Perros' explores and 
develops an excellent, mature and engaging symbol in the dog.  The dogs in 
parallel to the love stories make for a rich, thoughtful film.  As a movie 
watching experience, I found 'Amores Perros' too long, more specifically too 
slow for too long.  As a study in a thematic symbol, this film is top notch.  
Definitely worth seeing, even if broken into two sittings.