Odete (Two Drifters) (2005) directed by João Pedro Rodrigues

Olivier Père selected João Pedro Rodrigues as one of the best emerging film directors working today and chose the film Odete (Two Drifters) as an example that best represents his work.

Odete (Two Drifters) (2005):
Pedro (João Carreira) and Rui (Nuno Gil) had been lovers for a year when Pedro gets into a brutal car accident and dies in Rui’s arms. All alone, Rui feels hopeless and lost, with no taste for living. Pedro’s neighbor Odete (Ana Cristina de Oliveira), a roller-skating supermarket employee, insists on getting pregnant, which causes her lover, Alberto (Carloto Cotta), to run away. Her dream of having a baby becomes an obsession, and although she didn’t really know Pedro and Rui, she inserts herself into their lives.

"In Two Drifters, Rodrigues drives his passion for cinema to the furthest limit, almost in a form of osmosis with his heroine’s obsession with motherhood. This passion is expressed in the extravagant screenplay, which draws on fantasy and magic rather than on psychology and psychoanalysis."
Olivier Pére, Artistic Director, Locarno Film Festival