General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

O Cheiro do Ralo

O Cheiro do Ralo (released in English as Drained) is a 2006 Brazilian dark comedy film directed by Heitor Dhalia, based on the 2002 novel of the same name by Lourenço Mutarelli, starring Selton Mello as Lourenço, a São Paulo pawn shop owner who buys used objects from people in financial distress and comes to see people themselves as things for sale.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director and screenwriters	Heitor Dhalia; screenplay by Dhalia and Marçal Aquino, from Mutarelli's novel¹
Source novel	O cheiro do ralo (2002), Lourenço Mutarelli's first fiction book²
Running time	112 minutes per the Mostra de São Paulo archive and Newikis; 1h52 per Apple TV and JustWatch; 101 minutes per MUBI¹^•³^•⁴
Budget	Budgeted at R$2.5 million under the Lei do Audiovisual, realized for about R$315 thousand raised among private partners and executive producers⁵
Principal cast	Selton Mello (Lourenço), Paula Braun, Alice Braga, Sílvia Lourenço, Milhem Cortaz, Flávio Bauraqui; Mutarelli appears as a security guard¹^•⁶
Awards	FIPRESCI Prize at the 2006 Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival; Brazilian Critics Award at the 2006 Mostra de São Paulo; Sundance competition 2007; Best Actor at Guadalajara 2007⁴^•⁷

Spoilers

Plot and central metaphor

Lourenço runs a shop that buys used objects from people who come to him when they need money quickly. Over time he trades the coldness of simple negotiation for the pleasure of exploiting his customers, who are usually in serious financial difficulty, and he begins to see people as if they were for sale, classifying each one by a characteristic or by the object offered: "the bride", "the gramophone man", "the junkie".¹^•⁵ He narrates the story in first person, and the film's title refers to the permanent, foul smell of a drain (ralo) in his shop's bathroom, which obsesses him; he fears customers will think the smell comes from him.¹^•⁸

His system of treating the world as a catalog of things breaks down when he becomes obsessed with the body of a new waitress at the diner where he eats every day, played by Paula Braun, and is forced to relate to people using a currency foreign to him, affection.¹^•³ In his relationship with the drain he first denies its existence, then seals it with kilos of cement, and finally desires the smell and breaks the cement; the smell functions as a metaphor whose meaning the film requires the viewer to keep reinterpreting.⁸ The confrontation with characters he believed he controlled forces Lourenço to reevaluate his worldview.¹

Production and financing

The film was Dhalia's second feature, after Nina, and was produced by Geração Conteúdo, Primo Filmes and RT Features, with Heitor Dhalia, Joana Mariani, Marcelo Doria, Matias Mariani and Rodrigo Teixeira as producers.⁹ José Roberto Eliezer was the cinematographer and the musician and producer Apollo Nove composed the score, applying 1960s sonorities.¹

A low-budget production. When Dhalia received the authorization to raise funds through the Lei do Audiovisual in the amount of R$2.5 million, no one was willing to back the adaptation of Mutarelli's first fiction book.⁹ The film was instead made for about R$315 thousand, raised among private partners and the executive producers.⁵ Dhalia told the Sundance press that the independent approach was intentional: "The film was conceived in a way that, as far as I know, has no parallel in Brazil. Without fundraising and aesthetically with many elements of independent cinema, we really sought to follow the scheme that Sundance has been adopting".¹⁰

The project's record at ANCINE, the National Cinema Agency, under SALIC number 040164, shows a total approved value of R$2,453,301.23, of which R$1,016,128.99 was captured: R$299,957 under Article 1 of Law 8,685/93, R$150,000 under Article 1-A, and R$566,171.99 in own resources and counterpart funds, leaving a balance of R$1,437,172.24 not raised. The project's final status was recorded as approved with reservations and concluded on September 9, 2013.¹¹

Release and reception

The film was one of the most anticipated titles at the 2006 Festival do Rio, where it won the International Critics' (FIPRESCI) Award.⁹^•⁷ At the 30th Mostra Internacional de Cinema de São Paulo it received two awards including the Brazilian Critics Award, and it screened in the World Cinema competition at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where the indie audience applauded it, and won Best Actor at the 2007 Guadalajara International Film Festival.⁴^•¹⁰ The FIPRESCI critic Marco Antonio Barbosa described the film as potentially shocking, boring, or sickening to some viewers, none of which weakened its subversive dark humor or striking originality.⁷

Selton Mello's performance as Lourenço drew consistent praise: MUBI's editorial note calls it a masterfully complex portrayal of narcissism, and the Gazeta do Povo Sundance report credits his ironic rendering of a sadistic character with winning over audiences.⁴^•¹⁰ On JustWatch's Brazilian listing the film holds an 85% rating (152 votes) and a 7.3 on IMDb from about 6,100 users.⁶ In Brazil the film was distributed by Imagem Filmes.¹² It later became available on streaming in Brazil through MUBI and the MUBI Amazon Channel.⁶

The novel and critical readings

The source novel, O cheiro do ralo, was published in 2002 and was Mutarelli's first fiction book; he is also known as one of Brazil's leading cartoonists and appears in the film as an actor.²^•⁹ The novel is narrated in first person by an unnamed protagonist whose daily routine is worn down by repetition; he avoids durable human bonds, breaks with his girlfriend to avoid marriage, and states "Eu nunca sonho" ("I never dream").¹³ Ivana Ferigolo Melo, a Brazilian literary scholar, reads the narrative's urgency as a formal device representing accelerated, automated ways of life under a voracious capitalism that produces mental torpor and erodes ethics and affection.¹³

Scholarly work on the film has treated it as a study of reification (treating people and feelings as objects or commodities). Ricardo Fabrino Mendonça, a researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, analyzes the film through contemporary critical theory, drawing chiefly on the philosopher Axel Honneth and the sociologist Eva Illouz, arguing that the film shows the limits and contradictions of a world that has objectified singularities, affections, and people without knowing how to deal with the non-objectual dimension of these supposed things returning.¹⁴ A 2026 Brazilian criticism piece reads the drain as a metaphor for what people push out of sight: responsibilities, consequences, and conflicts they prefer to attribute to others.¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Black comedy and satire films › Released 1998 to 2024

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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