Looking for an English movie title about dogs

A friend I met online recommended this movie to me. That friend likes movies in Latin American languages ​​very much, and also recommended "Lucia's Lover". After watching "Love is a Bitch", I have already made up my mind to watch "Lucia's Lover" - a work recommended by one person at the same time, so the quality is not much different.

The original name of this film is Amores Perros, which is Spanish. After being translated into English, it became Love Is a Bitch. The Chinese title is a literal translation from the English. Before watching the movie, I suspected that there was something wrong with the English translation of the Spanish title. Because Amores Perros only has two words, either a noun parallel relationship or a verb-object relationship, and the English name Love Is a Bitch suddenly became a complete subject-verb-object structure, which is definitely not a literal translation. After watching the movie, I am basically convinced that this English translation is overly expressive.

There are some movies that you don’t want to watch again for a long time after watching them once - of course it’s not that the movie is too bad, it’s just that you don’t want to move that emotion again. But there are some movies that always force you to watch them again right away. This type of movie demonstrates the narrative skills of lens language and the exquisite structure of the script. Like a finely crafted nuclear boat, it is worthy of you to use a magnifying glass to repeatedly scrutinize its details. Such movies that I have watched include Crash, which has a network-like interwoven structure; Pulp Fiction, which is a three-part body connected by backstitches; and Elephant, which has multiple parallel developments. , and finally converge at one point. At the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, many film critics compared Amores Perros to "Pulp Fiction." But I think purely from a structural point of view, it is more like "Elephant": multiple lines of parallel development, interconnected by intersections. It's just that the intersection of the plot of "Elephant" is at the end, while the intersection of Amores Perros is in the middle.

The plot consists of three stories. In the first story, the protagonist A falls in love with his brother's wife and wants to run away with her. In order to save money, he took his pet dog to participate in dog fighting gambling. In the second story, a magazine boss had an affair with a popular female model B outside of marriage. Later, in order to be with B, he broke up with his wife and bought a house to live with B. In the third story, the protagonist C, who abandoned his career and family to join the Revolutionary Party and was later imprisoned for many years, still misses his daughter who has been separated from him for many years. After he was released from prison, his career was as a homeless man who picked up garbage with a group of dogs and as the assassin of the police chief.

The fate of the protagonists in these three stories has changed due to a car accident.

I tried to tell this 150-minute story in a smaller space, but failed. This may not make much sense.

At the beginning of the film, there are very frequent parallel cuts, which clearly explain the backgrounds of the three protagonists. After the car accident, A's story came to an end, and the main text was spent on the story of female model B. There were no longer frequent cuts. Furthermore, female model B's story had more emotional scenes and less action scenes, so originally The dynamic rhythm suddenly slows down. In the end, the story of Tramp C once again returned to the feeling it had at the beginning: violence and tenderness. The general feeling is that the story of female model B was not mixed well, disrupting the original rhythm and making the middle part of the story a bit lengthy. I think it would be better if it could be cut into a two-hour version.

The fate of every protagonist in the movie is related to dogs. Dogs are the sustenance of their love. A's dog gives him hope of running away with his brother and wife; female model B's pet dog is her spiritual dependence after her love career is threatened; homeless man C's dog is his replacement for his late wife and long-separated daughter. They love dogs because they love people. Yet the characters in the film all lost their own dogs. A's dog was injured and was picked up by C after the car accident; B's dog ran under the hole in the floor and did not come out; the dog C picked up bit all the other dogs he raised to death. Correspondingly, A did not wait for the woman he loved at the station in the end; B lost a leg, and there were incurable wounds in life and love.

And C, the soul character in the film, is the only one who brings us hope in the darkness. When he saw his dog being bitten to death, he pulled out his pistol, but he ultimately did not kill the dog that caused the incident. Dogs are innocent, and their cruelty is far inferior to that of humans. He may have sensed the cycle of karma when he lost all his dogs. The dog that caused the accident got him thinking again. So he gave up the assassination mission and made a little joke. He cut off his beard and hair and put on new clothes. When he completed the sign of being a new person, he secretly entered his daughter's home, returned the family photo he stole last time to her, and left the money he earned to his daughter. He sat on his daughter's bed and kept playing his daughter's voice on the answering machine. He left his thoughts and love for his daughter on the answering machine, then he sold the car and walked into the vast world with the dog. The final shot of the film means he is off to find his own life. He might still get married and have children, and he might still have someone who loves him. This is the greatest comfort and salvation for the soul after losing everything - to continue walking with your dog.

So back to the title of the film again. According to the English translation, the two words Amores Perros should mean love and dog respectively. Of course, it does not rule out the possibility that dog is the verb in front. However, the theme of the film is not to curse love and love as the English title expresses, that is, the film does not involve any connotation of the word bitch. So I made this judgment: Amores Perros is the juxtaposition of love and dogs. Amores is love because it is similar to Adore, and perros is dog because it is similar to puppy. I later went to the Internet to translate it online, which confirmed my idea.

Of course, the Chinese name has made a mistake in word meaning on top of the over-expression of the English translation. The love in Love Is a Bitch does not only refer to love, but to a broader range of love that includes family affection. So I think the most appropriate translation is "Love·Dog". It is not meaningless for me to consider this. Many of the comments about this film were made on bitch. I think the images are subject to translation, which is inappropriate.

Perhaps Amores Perros is not the most perfect in plot structure and rhythm, but the grasp of details and the wonderful performances of the actors completely make up for these shortcomings. Tramp C’s mugshot was pasted on the stolen family photo. When he became a new person, he took another good photo, replaced the original one, and then put the family photo back in his daughter's room. The performances here are moving. The actor won the Best Actor Award at many film festivals for this film. The actor who plays the protagonist A also gave a wonderful performance. With his unique temperament and a face as handsome as a virtual character, he is definitely an actor with great potential. All the performances in the film are basically faultless, even the performance of the beautiful female model B is remarkable (a figure and face plus acting skills, what a talent), which is very rare in a movie with many characters. In comparison, as a film with the same multi-line narrative and many characters, the performance in Crash can only be regarded as mediocre. The success of Crash lies in its exquisitely crafted script, but there are still heavy traces of American stereotypes. If I had to choose between two movies, I would definitely choose Amores Perros.

At the 2002 Oscars, Amores Perros lost to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in the Oscar competition for Best Foreign Language Film. If Amores Perros was considered an American film, it would most likely be nominated for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing, etc., and getting one or two of them would be completely It's possible. That way, more people will take notice of this excellent film. What do I want to say? I would like to say that the spotlight of the Oscars is so bright that it obscures the attention that many films should receive, so we must take the initiative to care about films in Latin America or other smaller languages, otherwise it will be a pity.