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Truly Dreadful Film

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

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.

I just cannot find the right words to describe how much "Odete/Two Drifters" suffers from having the writer as the director of the film. Perhaps another director or an editor could have straightened out this nonsense and made it intriguing. As it is, this film should not have seen the light of day. I actually found it insulting that the writer/director served up this trash with a straight face and expected the audience to applaud. The film simply lacks any cogent story beyond the initial tragedy. Once Odete enters the frame, the film slowly veers off the tracks of credibility until it is completely air-born. The film ends abruptly, as if slamming directly into the ground, with an ending so ridiculous that I actually felt slapped in the face. Plenty of movies have a gay man who meets a straight woman equipped with a "magic" vagina that he can't resist. It seems to be a film staple that gay men just haven't met the right woman. However, transcending that idiocy, this film ends by giving Odete an ethereal penis with which she expands her madness to include Rui. After this nugget of manure, I just cannot take anymore "straight women with gay men" lunacy. Really, it's enough.

Director João Pedro Rodrigues and writer Paulo Rebelo ('O Fantasma') collaborate again on this fascinating (if a bit frustrating) Portuguese film ODETE ('Two Drifters'). Together they have their own brand of surrealism and exploration of fantasies that seems to be developing into a smart new look for cinema. The very controversial 'O Fantasma' was dark and brooding, tearing open psyches like feral dogs along the slums of Portugal, whereas 'Two Drifters' is a work in the daylight that moves the concentration from men only to men and women - but the extremes of behavior are still in sharp focus.The film opens with a very tender moment between handsome student Pedro (João Carreira) and his working boyfriend Rui (Nuno Gil): it is their anniversary but their individual obligations prevent them from spending more than a hasty goodbye, exchanging rings, and off goes Pedro in his car only to be killed in a crash. Devastated, Rui attends to Pedro and then to the horror of sitting by his casket during the wake before the funeral.Flash into storyline two: the beautiful store skater Odete (Ana Cristina De Oliveira) lives with her lover Alberto (the hunky Carloto Cotta) but when she announces she would like to have a child, Alberto flees and Odete is left in depression over her plight. She just happens to be a neighbor of the recently dead Pedro and in her loneliness she attends Pedro's wake, follows the casket through the funeral and to the grave where she begins to obsess over the dead Pedro. She spends her time draped across his grave, fantasizes that she is pregnant by him and confronts Pedro's mother with the concept. She truly has pseudosiesis (false imagined hysterical pregnancy) and when it is an exposed condition she alters her appearance, cutting her hair and wearing Pedro's clothes and even convincing Pedro's mother to let her sleep in his bed. Ultimately Odete, now inhabiting the persona of Pedro, rejects Albert's return to her graces and instead enters into a bizarre arrangement with Rui.The actors are all physically beautiful people, superbly cast to fit the models of the personalities of the story, and they manage to make this rather incredible tale credible. The film is rich in symbolism and metaphors, among them the title of the English version 'Two Drifters' - a phrase taken form the favorite fantasy song 'Moon River' that is the theme of Pedro's and Rui's relationship. There are some distorted sexual scenes and innuendos that may be off-putting to some, but the inclusion works for the story. It is a tough little film but dazzling in its brave little way of taking chances, making us eager to see what João Pedro Rodrigues will do next! Grady Harp

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!