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.

Joao Rodrigues' latest appears to have a bigger budget than "O Fantasma." The photography is better, the color is more eye-catching. And he certainly does know how to pick mouthwateringly sexy guys for his casts. But just as he was mesmerized by garbage in "O Fantasma", he's morosely taken up in "Odete" by a wake and the necrophiliac attentions to a young man's embalmed corpse by the poor fellow's "crazy lady" neighbor and by his boyfriend, both of whom later become nauseatingly attached to the young man's gravesite. The finale is reminiscent of the climax of "The Grifters" but that scene made sense. The last minutes of "Odete" are grotesque and poor in credibility.Certainly, this movie is original and Rodrigues is a very talented auteur. But to succeed as art, a painful piece like "Odete" needs to be more than intensely depressing. Jim Smith

It had an original script and for a Portuguese film it is pretty good!And love the soundtrack ! The actors were really good and the ghost of "Pedro", even if it wasn't explicitly on the screen, the director made it that the audience could feel it! It was a surprising and shocking movie, but really well done!And the end is definitely a big shock and surprise!Of all the characters, "Rui" played by the actor Nuno Gil, was excellent and the most touchable to the audience, and remarkably the one we had more feelings about!Ana Cristina Oliveira was good as "Odete", but when she reincarnates in "Pedro", when she dress the jeans we have that "dejá vu" on the Levis' store publicity clip she had made!

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!