O Cheiro do Ralo

I just saw the movie few days ago on the Festival De Guadalajara. I saw it and it got me going. The acting is fabulous,every actor takes his part to a great level. And the first sequence is a delight for the eyes, and also the main actor. The irreverence of the movie, from the funny to the disgusting (And all in between) remind us that aesthetic doesn't necessarily means beautiful. With this wicked game of the aesthetic on art department, acting, screenplay and photo, you can't do anything but fall in love, and identify with the main character. I must say that I haven't read the book, but the writer must to be very pleased if he act on the movie (Find him out!) I just hope that it finds a good distributor, because I wanna have it on my collection, and I hope you too.

Most of the times, when we see a movie, we do not see it, we not feel it like a vivid fact, but we see it as a thing that is "out of us", apart of what we experiment each second of our lives.

Cinema is life, vivid experience, you and it, dialog, and not a standard of stimuli that we feel the necessity of fitting and of comparing, it is there to be lived!

Yesterday I began to realize better that, while watching "O cheiro do ralo" of Heitor Dhalia. The movie is brilliant, and the character of Selton Mello even more. Cynical, arrogant, shy and lonely. Lost in the middle of so many objects, which serves to try to provide this 'lack', the lack of something, of feeling, with the other, of contact..."I do not like you and I never liked nobody". The obsession, the money, the ' assumption controls of everything and of all '. Before so many losses he buys, it is the only weapon that he has.

It makes us think about all the nuances that wrap the human life, in all the bizarres thoughts that " we want not to have thought ", or for shame, for fear or for disapproval. It makes us understand that the life is desire, want of living, of feeling, of " being there ".

"O cheiro do ralo" manages with expertise to expose the strange and bizarre daily life of a character that is there on the screen, which is very different from us, but on the same time he manages to say very much of ourselves.

To laugh .... to think ... to get emotional ...to get bothersome ... for me this is life!

I felt odd about the movie. I know deep down I both hated it and loved it and I certainly can't stop thinking about it. It really is a sarcastic masterpiece, but very hard to watch. I didn't find it particularly funny in the spots where the audience laughed the most, and often felt horrified. I haven't read the book, which I'm sure is fantastic. Being lucky enough to have lived in Brazil for 7 years in the past, (e sim, eu falo Portuguese), I felt more and more the satiric edge of the main character as a metaphor for the worst things about Brazil lovingly portrayed by a master-- the obsession with the bunda over the female (that scene where he doesn't recognise he is not speaking to his favorite waitress till she turns around was incredible); the buying of worthless, often superstitious items over things really of value (100 rieis for a Stradavarius!?); the man constantly saying, "that smell is not from me, it's the drain;" (that line is especially deep and frightening and I understood it well); him giving all that money for the gun in a scene that looks like robbery; the fake father (leg and eye);his horrible treatment of the weak and helpless and poor; the growing obsession with the smell of his own excrement. I know the movie is a masterpiece-- the trouble is its view of the world through that glass eye is one I, too, would prefer to leave in the next room, perhaps.

Usually, when it comes to Brazilian films, it is common the themes which lies about the rich culture that shape this country or, as has happened recently, addressing the issue of urban violence. Therefore, these issues are also on the films that most Brazilians are recognized internationally. "Drained" is a different case, because it shows a Brazilian film that is not necessarily on a Brazilian theme. It tells a story about the complexity of human relations in their most obscure side, making a portrait full of dark humor. Talks about the way we transform everything into things with prices to be paid for. Selton Mello is perfect in the film, as well as the ambiance and direction. A surreal story, with great moments of humor, is what awaits the spectator of "Drained".

Amazing movie it captures the very deep essence of an ordinary Brazilian man, exaggerating to the limit of what society considers "acceptable" or sociable.

Despising others, playing cynical mind games with his clients, Selton Mello's character oscillates from the abject to more or less acceptable person. He runs a pawn shop, a dirty and smelly place and he wants everyone to know: The bad odour is not coming from him, it is coming from the drain. He is shy, reclusive and obsessed by woman hips, but with special attention to a waitress' from a cheap fast food restaurant. She is his platonic love.

Crude, disgusting, thoughtful, cynical with some dark humor. A hidden gem from Brazilian cinema.