Knight at the Movies ARCHIVES
A passionate, "must see" indie and a cloying fantasy -- guess which one I fell for?
We begin with a kiss.  A very passionate kiss shot in close-up between a man – and as the camera pulls back to reveal – another
man.  Dark haired, 21 year-old Pedro (João Carreira) doesn’t want to say goodnight to his blond boyfriend, Rui (Nuno Gil) –
especially after Rui has given him a silver ring to match his own with the inscription “two drifters” engraved inside.  Reluctantly Pedro
gets into his car after declaring his love and drives away after another passionate kiss.  A moment later, Rui dashes back outside his
apartment and down the street at the sound of a car crash.  With a certain dread, he knows it’s his Beloved.  Sure enough, Pedro
has crashed through the windshield and dies in Rui’s arms.  

Thus begins the first five minutes of writer-director João Pedro Rodrigues’ new movie,
Two Drifters.  This quick one two punch of
passion and tragedy is very much in the tradition of Almodóvar but after this unconscious nod to the master, Rodrigues’ boldly heads
off on his own.  He takes his movie and his characters into increasingly deeper waters.  This audacious, sexy movie pushes the
melodramatic envelope to the limit – then punches through to the other side for its daring climax and I dug it.  Big Time.  The
movie plays an exclusive one week run at the
Landmark Century Centre Cinema.  Don’t miss it.

The plot of the film, set in Portugal, comes into focus at the wake for Pedro.  It is there that the obsession with the dead man by the
tall, oddly beautiful Odete (Ana Cristina De Oliveira) becomes palpable.  We have first encountered Odete skating through a large
supermarket and becoming enthralled with a pregnant customer.  Odette wants to get pregnant too but when she mentions this and
her desire to marry to her boyfriend Alberto (Carloto Cotta), a security guard at the supermarket, he scorns her yearnings.  She flies
into a rage and tosses the (spectacularly) nude Alberto out of the apartment.  The scene at the wake follows.  Odete, for reasons
that are never made clear, is suddenly infatuated with the late Pedro who lived down the hall in her apartment building with his
mother.  In the first of many audacious acts she literally sucks the dead man’s “two drifters” engraved ring off his finger.

Odete’s hysterical grief (talk about your drama queens!) over the late Pedro escalates into crazier and crazier acts (at one point she
takes up residence at his graveside) until nothing – even the return of the boyfriend – can stop her obsession.  Odete’s behavior
has the wild eyed intensity of Isabelle Adjani in
The Story of Adele H along with the calculated determination of Reese Witherspoon in
Election.  Nothing’s going to stop Odete from stalking Pedro – not even the fact that he’s dead.  Eventually, even that won’t suffice
for the determined Odete who might be mad – or prescient.

At the same time Rui is sliding into suicidal depression as he deals with the loss of his lover (through anonymous sex, a suicide
attempt, and watching
Breakfast at Tiffany’s and listening to “Moon River” – which has the Johnny Mercer lyric that provides the title of
the movie).  Finally, Rui and Odete, who have been jousting over Pedro’s memory, form an eye opening bond (to say the least) that
allows them to share the dead man once and for all.  Their solution, the final scene of the movie, is Rodrigues’ biggest gamble and
I found it enthralling.  

The movie has the passionate, excessive bite of
Sante Sangre, the appalling glee of Cemetery Man and the mixture of sex and death
prominent in
The 4th Man and the whole thing is just this side of camp.  Now that’s tantalizing.  In Portuguese.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Speaking of tantalizing mysteries, M. Night Shyamalan is back with another movie.  Like
The Village, Lady in the Water, from the
look of the coming attractions, had the promise of a terrific ghost story for adults.  The kind without the gratuitous gore of
Saw II
and
Hostel, the cynical brutality of David Fincher and his ilk or the silliness of the American remakes of the new Japanese creepers –
The Grudge, The Ring II and the like.  Shyamalan’s movies are worth hoping for because he’s pulled off the difficult feat of the adult
ghost story in the past (
Signs, The Six Sense).  But the new picture, gussied up with gorgeous cinematography, wonderful acting from
his eager cast (headed by Paul Giamatti),
another beautiful James Newton Howard score, and moments of eerie beauty, dries up as
surely as
The Village did.

Shyamalan dispenses with his patented surprise twist but he also fails to provide a compelling narrative.  The simplistic story –
complete with its own myth-like prologue – focuses on a water creature (don’t ask) (Bryce Dallas Howard) who surfaces in the
swimming pool of an apartment complex filled with stock, eccentric characters.  These are linked by Paul Giamatti as the
maintenance man with a troubled past who must convince the residents to help him return the water babe to The Blue World before
a killer wolf-like creature gets her and killer monkeys hiding in the trees get it.  

So yeah – you either go with this fairy tale for grownups all the way or not at all.  I didn’t.
Fire and Water:
Two Drifters (Odete)-Lady in the Water
Expanded Edition of 7-19-06 Knight at the Movies/Windy City Times Column
By Richard Knight, Jr.