"Two Drifters": You may never think of "Moon River" the same way again.

[jimnysf]

Posted: 9/1/06 at 5:28pm

Has anyone seen this film? Although it is a drama, it sounds pretty funny! SF Chronicle Review:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/01/DDGM4KS9UC1.DTL&type=printable




I'm pregnant! And by the way, your dead boyfriend is the father.
- John McMurtrie, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, September 1, 2006



Two Drifters: Drama. Directed by Joao Pedro Rodrigues. In Portuguese, with subtitles. With Ana Cristina de Oliveira, Nuno Gil and Joao Carreira. (Not rated. 98 minutes. At the Lumiere.)



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The Portuguese film "Two Drifters" has no less than three scenes in which a bawling individual leaps onto a grave with great theatricality. Inevitably, a sudden gust of stormy weather blows in, signaling heightened emotional drama -- or simply letting the audience know that the film crew is in possession of a powerful wind machine.
Sad to say, but "Two Drifters" is not a comedy -- at least, that's not what director Joao Pedro Rodrigues set out to make. An overwrought weepie, it may be inspired by the recent dramas of Pedro Almodóvar, but it comes off as Almodóvar Lite -- muy lite.

Odete (a captivating Ana Cristina de Oliveira) is a supermarket employee who longs to have a baby. This is made clear when, at work, she begins rubbing infants' clothing against her face. (The best shots of the film are of a coquettish Odete working the aisles in roller skates, at one point daintily stubbing out an on-the-job cigarette with the brake pad of one of her skates.)

When Odete and her boyfriend break up over his resistance to the idea of fatherhood, Odete quickly, and unbelievably, turns creepy. After a neighbor, Pedro, dies, she worms her way into the lives of Pedro's lover, Rui, and his family, bluntly announcing that she is pregnant with the dead man's child. What follows is a far-fetched and ultimately absurd plot in which Odete, cackling maniacally -- and all but pulling her hair out -- toys with vacant puppy dog Rui's emotions.

Then things get hot and heavy. You may never think of "Moon River," the tender ballad used in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," in quite the same way. Then again, maybe you've already heard it accompany a scene of a buck-naked man being methodically mounted, as it were, by a woman dressed as his late lover -- whose ghost happens to be lingering in the foreground.

-- Advisory: Profanity, nudity, dangerously high levels of melodrama.

Updated On: 9/1/06 at 05:28 PM