DRAINED (Brazil)

It rarely happens that I watch a movie and I can't form a firm opinion about it. If Roger Ebert and Jonathan Rosenbaum have expressed similar reactions (to other films) in print, I figure it's ok to express an uncertain opinion here. As a matter of fact, the last time I felt like this, the film in question was I Heart Huckabees (2004). And here's Ebert's initial response to it: "At festivals, the moment a movie is over, everybody asks you what you thought about it. I said, "I didn't know what I thought." Then how did it make you feel? "It made me feel like seeing it again." I actually do have an opinion about Heitor Dhalia's adaptation of Lourenco Mutarelli's O Cheiro do Ralo (The Smell of the Drain). I won't pretend it's a firm, conclusive opinion though. I'd have to see it again. That alone probably means there's something original or subversive about Drained which renders it important.

Lourenco is a rich, well-dressed, 30-something who buys used goods from people desperate for cash. He takes delight in manipulating, disparaging, and humiliating them as if they were mere pawns in a game of his own creation. Lourenco treats the motley group that parade past his desk as commodities that would sell their soul if the price is right. He operates in a large warehouse in the outskirts of Sao Paolo where everything he buys gets cataloged and stored. Lourenco is obsessed with the smell of a clogged drain in the bathroom, a glass eye he believes to have special powers, and the round rear of a waitress at a nearby cafeteria. He goes there frequently, chatting up the waitress while ogling her rump. She has a naive sensuality and finds herself attracted to him. Laurenco doesn't want to know her name and doesn't want to seduce her, he wants to buy her. He complains about the stinking bathroom but he is also addicted to the stench, finding excuses not to have the drain unclogged (at one point he muses that the smell comes from hell itself). Lourenco shows awareness of his vile, pathetic existence but can't or won't change.

Mutarelli's novel is a tragedy with absurdist elements and a caustic critique of consumerism and capitalism. The story might also imply certain things about men's objectification of women. It's a highly provocative, metaphorical narrative told from the less-than-reliable point of view of an anonymous "Nosferatu"_a word Mutarelli uses to describe the protagonist. Dhalia adds bits of humor and playfully assigns the writer's first name to the protagonist. Dhalia further humanizes Lourenco by casting handsome, matinee idol Selton Mello in the lead role. "The character could not be seen as a total asshole or people would leave the film during the exhibition. The image I have built as an actor gave the character a certain goodness" says Mello. This approach to the character seems to me to be incompatible with the original nature of the story. Moreover, I'm not convinced the humor in it, which recalls films by the Coen Brothers, is appropriate within the overall context. Drained is a smart, original movie, but it's not fully realized because of incongruous elements added in the process of adaptation. I think.

Drained won Best Film at the Sao Paulo Film Festival and won Best Actor for Selton Mello and the FISPRESCI Prize at the Rio Film Festival.