'I'm Still Here' review: Brilliant political biopic honors family's resilience during dictatorship
This year’s Golden Globes nominees for best performance by a female actor in a motion picture (drama) included four Oscar winners in Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton and Kate Winslet, a great comeback story in Pamela Anderson — and the acclaimed and radiant Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres. When Torres’ work in “I’m Still Here” was announced as the winner, it might have come as a surprise to audiences who are more familiar with the other names on the list, but I wouldn’t call it an upset, as this is one of the best performances of the decade so far in one of the best movies of the decade so far.
To invoke the cliché, you owe it to yourself to experience this movie. With the singularly talented director Walter Salles (“Central Station,” “The Motorcycle Diaries,” “Dark Water”) at the helm and a remarkably vibrant and natural cast led by Torres, “I’m Still Here” is a great political biopic that gives just due to a dissident who surrendered his life in resistance to the military dictatorship in Brazil, but is primarily focused on the wife, mother and activist who must hold her family together.
Based on a true story, this is a tribute to the strength of a matriarch who doesn’t have time to grieve or feel sorry for herself. She has children to love and protect.
Filmed in gauzy, period-piece, early 1970s tones, with the occasional moment lensed through the viewpoint of a handheld Super 8 home movie camera, “I’m Still Here” plays like an extended memory, as if we’re seeing everything through the recollections of someone looking back on the most pivotal period of their life.
It’s Christmastime in Rio de Janeiro, where the former congressman Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello, terrific) has returned to his family after six years in self-exile after he was ousted from the government during the revolution. Rubens and his wife Eunice (Torres) live with their five children — four girls and a boy — in a happy, bustling, upper-middle-class home just across the street from Leblon Beach. It’s the kind of house where music is playing, books and artwork are everywhere, guests regularly stop by, and Eunice’s famous soufflé never disappoints.
The early sequences are almost achingly idyllic, as we see Eunice floating on her back in the water, girls dabbing Coca-Cola onto their skin as a tanning lotion as they gossip, a spirited game of volleyball, and the youngest Paiva child, Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira), scooping up a stray dog and running home to announce he’s adopting it. (The film is based on Marcelo’s book of the same name, with Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorena delivering an award-worthy screen adaptation.)
It all seems so lovely, but there are signs of the military dictatorship all around. Helicopters in the sky, army convoys rumbling down the streets, reports on the news of the Swiss ambassador's kidnapping. When daughter Vera (Valentina Herszage) and her friends are returning home from a movie, they’re detained and searched by authorities who shine flashlights in their eyes, looking for dissidents. Rubens regularly meets with associates behind closed doors, with envelopes regularly exchanged. It’s clear he’s involved in resistance activities, though Eunice never asks questions.
One night, serious men come banging on the door and demand that Rubens come with them for questioning. Eunice and her daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) are eventually brought in as well, with Eliana released after one day, while Eunice endures nearly two weeks of brutal conditions and harsh interrogation in a dark and dank jail cell before she is released and returns home, telling the children their father will soon return as well — though she already knows Rubens is almost certainly never coming home.
Fernanda Torres carries the film with an astonishingly resonant performance that conveys a world of emotions without ever delving into theatrical histrionics. Eunice has a unique relationship with each of her five children, tending to their individual personalities and strengths and vulnerabilities with a mother’s unwavering love and understanding. As the years go by, Eunice returns to law school and becomes an advocate for human rights, crusading for justice, campaigning for the recognition of disappeared individuals such as her husband.
We jump forward to scenes set in 1996 and then in 2014, with Torres’ mother, the great Fernanda Montenegro, playing the older Eunice in the final sequences, and a host of wonderful actors taking on the roles of the grown children. We can see how the now extended unit that includes spouses and partners, children and cousins, is filled with life and love.
The disappearance and death of Rubens Paiva was an unfathomable loss for this family, but they flourished through the generations, in great part because Eunice wouldn’t have it any other way. “I’m Still Here” is one of the best films I’ve ever seen about the power of family.