Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Martin Bradley The grimness of the pre-credit sequence of Joao Pedro Rodrigues' "Two Drifters" isn't maintained though what follows is hardly a barrel of laughs. This is a film about people who are emotionally damaged and who are overwhelmed by grief. Odete, (Ana Cristina De Oliveira), is the beautiful but lonely girl who works in a supermarket and longs to have a baby. Rui, (Nuno Gil), is the young gay man she meets at the wake of his lover, Pedro, and who holds himself responsible for Pedro's death and nothing is quite what it appears to be on the surface.For example, Odete is far from a conventional heroine. Her neuroses, indeed you might even say her madness, doesn't make her particularly sympathetic and her relationship with Pedro is never really explained. Rui, on the other hand, despite all his guilt, is the more empathetic of the two characters and it is he, rather than Odete, we root for.Because of the darkness of the subject matter this isn't an easy film to like but Rodrigues handles the material beautifully and all the performances are first-rate. It never really saw the light of day and has largely disappeared and while it strictly doesn't fall into the category of New Queer Cinema it is, nevertheless, a welcome addition to what I would consider 'gay-themed' cinema.

jim smith Joao Rodrigues' latest appears to have a bigger budget than "O Fantasma." The photography is better, the color is more eye-catching. And he certainly does know how to pick mouthwateringly sexy guys for his casts. But just as he was mesmerized by garbage in "O Fantasma", he's morosely taken up in "Odete" by a wake and the necrophiliac attentions to a young man's embalmed corpse by the poor fellow's "crazy lady" neighbor and by his boyfriend, both of whom later become nauseatingly attached to the young man's gravesite. The finale is reminiscent of the climax of "The Grifters" but that scene made sense. The last minutes of "Odete" are grotesque and poor in credibility.Certainly, this movie is original and Rodrigues is a very talented auteur. But to succeed as art, a painful piece like "Odete" needs to be more than intensely depressing. Jim Smith

yappbutt It had an original script and for a Portuguese film it is pretty good!And love the soundtrack ! The actors were really good and the ghost of "Pedro", even if it wasn't explicitly on the screen, the director made it that the audience could feel it! It was a surprising and shocking movie, but really well done!And the end is definitely a big shock and surprise!Of all the characters, "Rui" played by the actor Nuno Gil, was excellent and the most touchable to the audience, and remarkably the one we had more feelings about!Ana Cristina Oliveira was good as "Odete", but when she reincarnates in "Pedro", when she dress the jeans we have that "dejá vu" on the Levis' store publicity clip she had made!

MisterFrame I wasn't really going to comment, but then I figured I had something to say. I saw this film two days ago and, although I think it's not a complete waste of time (it might have been of money though, for the producers), it's obvious it has serious problems. It's got really good cinematography and (little but) nice music. A lot has been said about Ana Cristina Oliveira but, let's be honest, over what? She is not really an actress an she balances permanently between over-acting and preposterous under-acting. Her performance passes for good because there has never been anyone like Odete in any other film: crazy? sad? childlike? an impostor? no one knows, fellows. So she's kinda sorta dictating the rules here.I thought this film was also a good example of the problem most Portuguese films suffer from: soundtrack. There is a permanent NO to dubbing and the result is this usual mass of noise that comes out of the blue. People in other countries may think Portugal is the noisiest of places. What thrilled me though, was that some of the dialog was dubbed but it didn't necessarily solve the syndrome. Bad dubbing too, I must say. It's strange to watch a film in which the first thing that strikes my mind on the first scene, when the first character speaks is: it's dubbed. And all this to say that the film has technical problems.It also has script problems. It tries to be classical from the first to the last scene. There was a desperate fear of leaving things suspended and that shows. The writer was obviously trying to get everything straight and he does but... it shows!! All dialog is too expositive and there isn't one single piece of talk that sounds like a line from a film. It's all a little raw and slightly unpleasant.Not that the film is a total mess, I must stress. I just think the good parts are so obvious that I prefer to concentrate on the bad ones.Direction brings little to the weak screenplay. All shots are classical and un-innovative, but their beautiful. Great work from Rui Poças, by the way.Now, what I think was THE problem, the one that keeps people from believing this story and laugh throughout the film instead of taking it seriously: The guy who plays the guy who DIES is obviously not an actor. Actually, It's a rather important role and I can't see why non-actors are cast for such parts. This guy is neither an actor nor a good-looking man. Which means the whole film rolls down the mountain, since we never believe for one second that this gorgeous woman is obsessed with him even though he's gone, and that his hunky lover who survives is actually having a bad time getting over the loss, when all we see of this character is apathy. Too bad. The world is full of beautiful people who even happen to be nice seductive lovers. The world is full of good actors who are also cute boys and capable of causing obsessions on people after they's gone. The world is full of great films and also of not that great films. C'est la vie!