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.

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.

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.

I just saw this in Salt Lake City at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and was both shocked, amazed, delighted and disgusted by it. It is some kind of weird masterpiece. It's based on a book and the filmmakers at the Q & A said it was very faithfully adapted.

Though the story focuses on the obsessions of its pawn shop owning protagonist, namely a pretty girl's ass, a smelly backed-up bathroom drain, and a glass eye, it still manages to be full of intelligent, thought-provoking ideas and themes.

I really loved this film because it is so unbelievably original and fresh, both in its content and with its form. The viewer never knows where it's going to go as it twists and turns through its strange little storyline.

A great film! More than a great movie it's a very good metaphor to the materialistic and "cold" society we have nowadays, never caring about people's feelings, but about money and power through money instead. The film is full of irony and sarcastic humor and criticizes very well those people who think they can buy everything with their money, even other people. Even the title (which literary translated means "The smell of the drain") is sarcastically humorous and a metaphor to characterize such people, without any character, scrupulous, or even feelings!

The acting by Selton Mello, which plays LOURENÇO, the main character, is excellent! The whole plot is around his character but he does it very well, because he can really be an annoying and irritating character (having that personality I did refer before). The work done by Paula Braun is also very good (and, by the way, she's beautiful!), but I must say I didn't like very much to watch her character fall into LOURENÇO's will, I mean, at the end she does exactly what he wants her to do, when before she had shown a strong character refusing his "indecent proposal": receive some money to show her ass! Of course it's a way this movie has to show us that in this "rotten society" money can really buy anything, and even change people's mind; but I didn't appreciate to watch this changing in the "GARÇONETE" character anyway.

The soundtrack is also fine.

It's a very simple movie, but works very well as a metaphor, so I score it 8/10.