The Cannes Festival paid tribute to Amores dogs On its 25th anniversary, A film that was an “explosion” in Mexican cinema and that changed life to all who participated in it, As indicated by its director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and actor Gael García Bernal.
“We definitely changed our lives to all of us who made the film. It was a collective act,” explained the Mexican filmmaker, double winner of the Oscar for the best director (by Birdman and The Revenant), Before the projection of the film, which was restored in 2019 and that in this edition of the Festival was one of the main dishes of the Historical Jewelry Program Cannes Classics.
Iñárritu was amazed that 25 years have passed since its premiere, in “a blink and close with an eye”, and stressed that Amores dogs transformed many things “into the perception of Mexican cinema”, since at that time “there was practically no possibility of making a movie as a young man” and “making a career was impossible.”
It was also a chimera to enter the great festivals, as its opera made that year 2000, competing in the parallel section of Cannes Critics’ Week.
“It is a film that opened doors to all and many more behind us, that is a fact,” said Iñárritu (Mexico City, 1963).
He recalled that first trip to Cannes – because they go to the French Costa Azul Contest, regardless of which section, “your life changes” – and the experience of suddenly sitting at the table “of the World Cinema Dialogue”, at a time when the filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci presided over the jury of the Critics’ week.
Told anecdotes about the nerves that happened at the premiere of Amores dogswhich had to go in advance after smoking two tobacco packs to reach a meal precisely with Bertolucci and the other seven participants of that year in the Critics’ Week.
The Italian filmmaker shared his nerves and felt like “a child they were going to qualify.” Also the envy that Bertolucci gave him, who was already an settled filmmaker and did not have to go through that experience.
“Alejandro, I have bad news: after the first movie everything is worse,” he recalled that he replied.
For his part, the director of Dreamers and The last tango in Paris He also participated in the festival, that year 2000, in the tribute of the 25th anniversary of another of his great works, Nineteen.
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“I thought, watching Bernardo, I young, what a director will feel watching a movie 25 years later. I could not conceive it, it was something that I could not do an equation. And today I find myself here,” he said amazed.
And today, the banalization of the image means that to the maximum that can be aspired, he regretted, it is to “be the film of the week on a mobile phone.”
Together with the tribute, several team members, such as the actor Gael García Bernal, who was skilled by the tears as soon as he grabbed the microphone to take the floor.
“I promised that I was going to start crying when the movie started and not now. One is already big,” he said, unleashing the public’s applause.
Something recovered, García Bernal took the opportunity to thank Iñárritu that opportunity before melting in a hug with him: “I want to specifically thank Alejandro, because you changed my life, bastard.”
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The person in charge of presenting this tribute was the director of the Cannes Festival, Thierry Frémaux, who also pointed out that Amores dogs It was an “explosion of something” that also fed other figures of the Iñárritu generation, such as Alfonso Cuarón.
“Amores dogs It is already a classic film in the history of Mexican cinema, but also world cinema“Frémaux said.