Steamboat Pilot & Today

Maybe it's an American audience thing, but because we are an American audience, I will begin this with a warning.

Before you even think about watching "Amores Perros" (translated: "Love's a bitch") you should understand that no dogs were hurt in the making of this movie. If you don't know that, it will be hard to watch. Before the showing of "Amores Perros," a short film will be shown about the making of the movie and the treatment of the dogs.

A main motif in the movie is the dogfight -- bloody, back street, to the death, dog fights.

They appear again and again as the human characters destroy each other and themselves.

"Amores Perros" is a patchwork of three painful stories, held together by the intersection of two streets and a car accident. Otherwise, there is no tie. No relation. They never meet.

"Love's a bitch" is an apt synopsis for the theme of this movie, shot in Mexico City.

Each story is more confusing and unsettling than the last. In one storyline, a man decides to become the savior of his pregnant, abused sister-in-law. He enters his dog in weekly dogfights to raise the money he needs to run away with her.

He is driving his bleeding dog to the veterinarian when he runs a stoplight and collides with a Spanish supermodel. She is on her way to the store to buy some wine to toast her new life in a new home with her boyfriend. Instead, she returns home disfigured from the accident.

The third character and third storyline is standing on the corner -- a homeless man, pushing a cart, surrounded by the stray dogs he feeds. His story follows his obsession with a daughter he abandoned as a toddler to join the Zappatistas.

Nominated for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award in 2001, it is being shown next week as part of the ongoing Northwest Colorado Mexican Cultural Festival. The showing of this movie follows a visit Tuesday by the Mexican Consulate and a reading of a diversity resolution at the City Council meeting.