L'odeur du siphon

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.

This movie is very uncommon for Brazilian productions. It is based on a very interesting plot, regarding a man and his obsessions (the smell of a sewer, the butt of a restaurant waitress), and how he deals with different people who want to sell all kind of crazy things.

Although the movie may seem superficial and shallow at first, it actually has subtle messages portraying a desperate and lonely man, who tries to find relief in the material world, but realizes that the problem is within himself.

Finally, I would recommend this movie to everyone who wants to see another kind of Brazilian films, one which is not pure drama or pure comedy, and which tells a story in a very different way.

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")

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!

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.