He wants her to run away with him and hopes the money he makes will convince her to do so. In a powerful performance, Bernal manages to combine urban bravado with a boyish, fresh-faced tenderness. His character might be able to cold-heartedly watch dogs rip each other apart, but his obsessive love betrays the softness beneath the posturing exterior. The film includes graphic depictions of human and animal violence. At the New York Film Festival, some people walked out.
People have to realize, of course, that it's a movie.
It's done with special effects. The fights were done by really nice dogs. Those scenes were hard to make because we had to react as if they were tearing each other apart when they were just playing. If anything, he says, the dogs were treated better than the humans. Though he spent most of his teen years in Mexico City, Bernal lived in the outskirts of the sprawling city, far from the much more dangerous neighborhood in which his character lives.