NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Patience Watson One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

lucad_99 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.

pf_o_tosco 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!

Jessica Carvalho Lourenço buys used goods ( mostly antiquities or unusual things) from people who needs money. In his shop, there is a drain inside the bathroom, that smells terrible and makes the entire shop to smell as well. He becomes embarrassed by it's smell and every time a client enters his officer, he explains that the terrible smell comes from the drain. Eventually, he becomes more and more annoyed,stressed and strange. He ends his relationship with his fiancée and becomes interested in a girl who works in a bar. Well, not exactly the girl, but her....butt! And as more time passes, Lourenço becomes more strange, starting even to control people with his money...I watched ''Cheiro do Ralo'' in the opening screens here in Brazil( The actor Selton Mello was present and the director as well).This movie has an independent production (it was made with a very low budget) and is based in a book by the same name, that I never read, by the way.Because of it's name (something like ''The Smell of the Drain''') I thought this movie would be terrible and I even laugh when I heard it. But it actually showed to be very good and unusual, with the character Lourenço becoming more strange,sick and bizarre as the time passes. How to forget the glass eye he buys and uses to 'see'things all the time, for example? Another nice thing to say, is that Selton Mello, the main actor and character , was not payed for this movie. This is one of the coolest things to see in a REAL actor, when he does his job for pleasure and because the project is good.Ps: Selton Mello is a famous actor here in Brazil.

Anideos 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.