L'odeur du siphon

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.

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 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.

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.

Lourenço (Selton Mello) is a dealer that buys belongings of needy people by a lower price to profit reselling them. He is a deranged, cold and selfish man that sees people like objects for sale, exploiting their needs. When he meets the waitress of a cheap diner, he falls in love for her butt and does not know what to do when she shows affection for him. He believes that the smell of the sewer strainer of his bathroom is blurring his mind and is a gateway to hell, but refuses to pay for its repair. When a junkie client abused by the power of his money reacts, the world of the controller Lourenço begins to fall apart.

"O Cheiro do Ralo" is a weird and unpleasant tale of the insanity process of a man completely obsessed by the power of his money. The Kafkaesque story is intriguing but unfortunately goes nowhere and has a pointless end. Selton Mello, as usual, has a magnificent performance but the situations are repetitive and this low-budget Brazilian movie is too long. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Cheiro do Ralo" ("The Smell of the Sewer Strainer")