The new film by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries, Central Station), Brazil’s most celebrated living director, I’m Still Here has finally arrived at a movie theater near me. The reason it’s playing in wide release is no doubt because it’s an Academy Award nominee, up for Best Picture, Best International Film, and Best Actress for Fernanda Torres. There’s a strong argument to be made that it ought to win them all.
A political drama based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, I’m Still Here is about a family fractured by the Brazilian military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985. There was an attempt by right-wing groups in Brazil to boycott the film. But it’s turned out to be the highest-grossing film in that country since the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the early 1970s, when the movie is initially set, former congressman Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) has returned home from political exile after the CIA-backed military overthrow of João Goulart’s left-wing government. We find Rubens working as a civil engineer and living with his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) and their five lively children in Rio de Janeiro.
Salles spends a lot of time exploring the dynamic of the family, which is an unusual one in that it seems to be a genuinely happy bunch. The Paivas are affluent, which is a great help, and live in a marvelously vibrant house on the beach in Rio. The jovial Rubens and vivacious Eunice host dinners and parties in a warm circle of friends, and spend lots of time with their kids, who are wonderfully cast and directed to convey their strong individual personalities. There’s oldest daughter Veroca (Valentina Herszage), for example, gorgeous and fiercely outspoken. There’s Eliana (Luiza Kosovski), emotionally sensitive and the first to fully realize the disaster that’s overtaken the family.
And there’s Marcelo, bright and engaged, played by Guilherme Silveira, a boy who Salles spotted playing in the street who…
Auteur: Eileen Jones
