ODETE

Odete screened at the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, 2005, where it won a Special Mention.

With Odete, filmmaker João Pedro Rodriguez asks, “Can we survive the loss of our loved ones by nourishing on dreams?” His film about grief, loneliness, desperation and survival starts with homosexual lovers, Rui and Pedro, blissfully happy until Pedro dies in a car accident. The grieving Rui finds himself drawn to their neighbour, Odete, whose recent relationship has collapsed after she expressed her desire to have a child. Rui's very real grief is interrupted by Odete's manipulations and demands. When she begins to transform herself into his dead lover, the question becomes not one of whether she's crazy or not but of how strong true love really is.

Teetering on the precipice of reality and fantasy, Rodriguez's characters inhabit a world of vertigo pop where people wear roller-skates while working at the supermarket and everything is performed on the mobile phone - making appointments, saying “I love you”, breaking up…

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D/S João Pedro Rodriguez P Maria João Sigalho S Paulo Rebelo WS Erika Reusens L Portuguese w/English subtitles TD 35mm/2005/101mins

João Pedro Rodriguez was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1966. His films include Happy Birthday (1997, short), This is My House/Trip to the Expo (1998, two-part doco) and O Fantasma (2000).