Morrer como um Homem (2009)

I found To Die like a Man indulgent. I really enjoy Rodrigues's sensibilities, and I love his portraits of desperation and longing, but this one takes odd, unmotivated turns that didn't work for me. Twice during To Die like a Man, all the color leaves the movie and we sit in an odd wash for longer than is interesting. It's not a bad movie, per se – not at all, in fact – but Rodrigues needed to curb his own tendencies here, I think.

Odete (2005)

I didn't love Odete, which was released as Two Drifters in the U.S. (where they wanted to market it to gay audiences. I think the reason I didn't love Odete – although I love João Pedro Rodrigues – is mostly because Odete herself is a total nutjob. Rodrigues's film is about loss and lack, and the young man at the center has lost the man he loves, but the young woman at the center is missing something more existential. I don't know. I was into this for a while, but Odete really started to get on my nerves, and then the ending was really just not for me.

O Fantasma (2000)

Sexy and weird, O Fantasma is a story of a young man's desperation as it grows and grows to a breaking point. It's about obsession and confusion and terror. This is a tragic film, but also so strange that it is constantly intriguing. The final act of this film manages to be both heartbreaking and bizarre. I really, really liked this.

I've been watching João Pedro Rodrigues's films on the Criterion Channel, since they're about to leave. The first film of his I saw was The Ornithologist, and it's so intriguing and surreal and wonderful. O Fantasma is really a masterpiece, though. I look forward to watching both Odete and To Die like a Man. I expect very queer things.

The Ornithologist

The Ornithologist is beautiful and creepy and strange and super gay and filled with religious imagery. (The photography that opens the movie is truly stunning.) This film is supposed to be a kind of travesty or perverse reading of the story of St. Anthony of Padua. I didn't really understand much of this St. Anthony stuff, and wikipedia was no help at all, but I still liked this. It's so fucking weird.