By Sandra Hall
I’M STILL HERE ★★★★
(M) 137 minutes
For the Brazilian director, Walter Salles, I’m Still Here was a highly personal undertaking. As a teenager, he spent a lot of time visiting the house by the sea in Rio de Janeiro where much of the film is set.
Selton Mello as Rubens Paiva and Fernanda Torres as his determined wife Eunice in I’m Still Here.Credit: Sony Pictures Classics
It was the home of Rubens Paiva, his wife, Eunice, and their five children – a place full of music, laughter and lively intellectual debate about Brazil’s future.
Paiva had been a liberal congressman, forced to step down in 1964 after the military coup that transformed the country’s political landscape. He then returned to his work as an architectural engineer, but that did not calm the military’s suspicions about him. In 1971, he was arrested, disappearing inside one of the regime’s most notorious prisons.
A superbly constructed account of the case and its aftermath based on the memoir by the Paivas’ son, Marcelo, the film has been nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars as well as being Brazil’s entry for Best Foreign Feature. And its star, Fernanda Torres has won both a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for her performance as the indomitable Eunice, who never gives up on her campaign for the release of information about her husband’s fate.
I wasn’t surprised to read about Salles’s emotional connection to the Paiva family. The film’s early scenes buzz with a playful energy that speaks eloquently of his affection for the family and the good times he had with them.
Fernanda Torres has won both a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for her performance as the indomitable Eunice.Credit: Sony Pictures Classics
Rubens (Selton Mello) comes across as an indulgent father who delights in his kids’ company. The beach is their playground and for Eunice, her daily swim is a restorative. When the film opens, she’s floating on her back, gazing tranquilly at the blueness of the sky, yet she’s just as happy when entertaining the friends who come to their many parties.
But the danger signals are already clear. The military is cracking down on left-wing demonstrators and Rubens and his friends are aware that they’re prime targets, but they’re not prepared for the brutal suddenness of Rubens’ arrest, followed by Eunice’s detention in a dank cell where the corridors echo with the screams of prisoners under torture.
I’m relieved to be able to say that this is the film’s lowest point. Its second half is a well-deserved tribute to Eunice’s resolve in re-making her life and safeguarding her children as they grow up.
Bidding a sad farewell to the beachside house, they move to Sao Paolo, where she takes up her studies again and begins a new career as an international expert on the rights of Brazil’s indigenous people. And maybe that makes it sound as if Torres is giving us a bland model of human perfection but that isn’t so.
Eunice runs the full gamut – from the pleasure she takes in having her family around her to the despair of the prison scenes and the shrieking burst of anger she unleashes on a couple of government lackeys assigned to sit on a parked car all day and keep watch on her house.
She captures the nature of Eunice’s courage and the stubborn determination that underpins it but we can also taste her fear and her sorrow over Rubens’ loss. In everything she does, there is great dignity together with an unshakeable sense of self-worth.
She’s matched by Salles’s skill in evoking the mood that prevails among Paiva and their friends. In clandestine ways, they have all been doing whatever they can to keep a spark of resistance alive but equally important is the fun they have when they’re together. That’s the spirit which makes this the most remarkable of feelgood films.
I’m Still Here is in cinemas from today.
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