29/12/2005

It is time for the national premiere of one of the most awaited Portuguese titles of the year. Odete [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which opens today with 10 copies (distributed by Lusomundo) marks the coming back of João Pedro Rodrigues, five years after the plunge into the abyss of desire which made out of O Fantasma a unique and controversial title in Portuguese film history. Now Rodrigues seems less acid, and dares to do what we less expected from him: creating a tale about a disturbing love triangle, which, like some classic stories, extends its impact towards the limits of eternity. Here death is not the end, but simply a turning point. If in O Fantasma the individual seek of pleasure was the characters' leitmotiv, in Odete the tone is mostly romantic, as if the whole plot was built as a manifest against loneliness.

The national premiere of Odete takes place after its success in a few international festivals. Besides the "Cinémas de Recherche" award in Cannes, it was elected Best Film in the Bogotá Film Festival and Ana Cristina Oliveira got the Best Actress award in Belfast.

After Carlos Coelho da Silva's The Crime Of The Father Amaro and Marco Martins's Alice - both titles benefited from an unusual promotion, which certainly influenced their box office results – the campaign for Odete includes spots on TV and radio, as well as advertisements in magazines and outdoors.

Starring Ana Cristina Oliveira, newcomer Nuno Gil, João Carreira and Teresa Madruga (in an amazing performance as a mourning mother), Odete was produced by Maria João Sigalho for Rosa Filmes, a Lisbon-based production company that also handles the international sales. The film has already been bought for distribution in France, Greece, USA and negotiation are being closed with Brazil.