By Robert St. Martin
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 10/31/24 – Friday evening, October 25, at AFI FEST 2024, was a screening of I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) – a 2024 Brazilian drama film directed Walter Salles from a screenplay by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 book Ainda Estou Aqui. The film stars Fernanda Torres and Fernanda Montenegro as Eunice Paiva, a mother and activist searching for her missing husband, congressman Rubens Paiva, during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship. It is Salles’ first Brazilian feature film in 16 years.
In 1971 Brazil, the lives of Eunice Paiva and her five children abruptly change after the disappearance of her husband, former Brazilian Labor Party congressman Rubens Paiva. The film was selected as the Brazilian entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Award.
Walter Salles shows the way that the horror of a dictatorship can invades a family unit without warning and take up residence in his moving drama, that wraps us in the warmth of the Paiva family’s embrace before their nightmare begins. I’m Still Here is written by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega and based on the true story of ex-congressman/engineer Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) and his family, as outlined in the book by Rubens’ son Marcelo (played by Guilherme Silveira as a youngster and then Antonio Saboia), but Salles has also known the family for decades, which shines brightly in the detail. Family, in general, is the key to a film, which unlike many concerning Latin American dictatorships, retains its domestic focus.
We quickly get to know the Paivas at a bustle of a day on the beach in which volleyball, tanning and stray dog adoption will all play a part. It feels familiar but also specific thanks to Salles’ attention to detail, which extends throughout. This is a tactile retelling, inviting us to imagine the sticky feel of Coca-Cola on hot skin in the sun or the heat of a sheepskin coat and the love that goes with it being passed from mum to daughter ahead of a trip abroad. Beyond the Seventies grain and high colors, the sense of being able to almost reach out and touch the era is enhanced by cinematographer Adrian Teijido’s use of Super-8 film, as we see portions of the action through the newly acquired camera that Rubens’ daughter Vera (Valentina Herszage) is in love with.
Salles gathers us close to the family as they, in turn, gather friends towards them, their house as open as a sunny smile and in contradiction to the tightening grip of the military dictatorship. Rubens isn’t a big player in terms of his resistance – and Salles’ focus doesn’t lie with this so that we share the family’s bewilderment when he is taken in for questioning. Those in power arrive not with the bang of guns but more insidiously, like an oil slick that slowly coats blue water. When Rubens is arrested his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) finds she is scooped up too, along with her teenage daughter Eliana (Luiza Kozovski).
At the detention center an altogether different tactile space is created by Salles, only this isn’t one we want to touch. Filthy and dark, we are again invited to share Eunice’s horror as she is repeatedly interrogated about photos of people she doesn’t recognize while the sounds of torture – which could well include those of her daughter – drift in from outside.
When Eunice and her daughter return, it’s the family again which becomes the focus, even as they gradually begin to realize that Rubens is gone for good. Torres imbues Eunice with a sense of stillness and restraint, which continues to pay off as the film travels forward in time, showing how the loss continues to shape the family unit and lead Eunice to take a fresh direction.
Eunice is finally played as an old woman suffering from Alzheimer’s by Torres’s real-life mother Fernanda Montenegro – who was previously Oscar-nominated for Salles’ Central Station – making the transition feel completely seamless. It’s a coda as full of life as it is poignancy. The family are gathered once again for celebration, but something has been lost as well as gained. Whatever may be fading for Eunice, her gaze remains resolute to the last and, ultimately, it’s her legacy and that of so many like her, that endures.
