Director Walter Salles’s first function movie since 2012, the Oscar-nominated I’m Nonetheless Here’s a go back to house flooring, and a go back to energy, for the Brazilian auteur. At 68, Salles reconnects together with his early life, telling a tale through which he does no longer determine, however takes up the position of witness to the ache of others.
I’m Nonetheless Right here is customized from the autobiographical novel Ainda Estou Aqui via Salles’s fresh, the author Marcelo Rubens Paiva. The unconventional recounts Paiva’s father’s disappearance in 1971, beneath the repressive dictatorship of Emílio Garrastazu Médici, throughout the reminiscences of the writer’s mom, Eunice Paiva.
In Salles’s movie, the Paivas lead an enchanted existence in a area going through Leblon seashore in Rio de Janeiro, till the lengthy arm of the army regime wrecks their dream.
Searching for one thing excellent? Lower throughout the noise with a in moderation curated collection of the newest releases, reside occasions and exhibitions, instantly in your inbox each and every fortnight, on Fridays. Join right here.
Liked circle of relatives head, Rubens (Selton Mello), an engineer and congressman secretly taking part with the underground opposition, is abducted via state police beneath the pretence of a regimen interrogation. It then befalls his spouse Eunice (Fernanda Torres) to maintain circle of relatives existence and provides their youngsters a way of long run whilst looking for out what came about to her husband.
It’s the second one act of the movie, specifically the harrowing but restrained sequences of Eunice’s days-long detention, that expose the stakes of the tale. Her aggravating revel in in prison and more and more determined seek for her husband afterwards is framed as a transformative adventure. It’s one that may culminate 25 years later, when the reminiscence of the disappeared is reinstated within the legit archives of the country’s historical past.
I’m Nonetheless Right here adopts a linear taste of storytelling and classical three-act construction (balance, disruption, reparation) that serves ancient closure, strengthened via the show of the Paiva circle of relatives’s photographic archive within the final credit.
This acquainted conference takes on a different poignancy in I’m Nonetheless Right here, the place the personal archive is an impressive selection to a discredited “official” media narrative. The reconstruction of on a regular basis existence conveys staying power and resistance. This in flip brings to the fore the gendered dynamics of the Paiva family.
Rubens’s underground political process towards the regime signifies that he leads a double existence to which Eunice, for all her loving closeness to her husband, stays blind to. That is sorely examined when Rubens disappears. With him the primary supply of source of revenue, it leaves Eunice and the kids to cobble in combination a brand new life in São Paulo.
Adopting Eunice’s point of view right through, the movie observes how her courting along with her eldest daughters starts to fracture as they to find alternative ways of dealing with aggravating loss and an unsure long run. On the other hand, the movie remains clean of melodrama, leaving Eunice to internalise the method as a substitute.
Within the lead position, the prolific 59-year-old actor Fernanda Torres carries the movie as easily in fitted pencil skirts and stylish geometric patterns of past due Sixties model. Her display chemistry with the relatively more youthful Selton Mello – they’re the easiest couple whilst happiness lasts – is palpable.
Torres’s managed, nuanced efficiency navigates the circle of relatives’s shift in fortunes with measured calm and steely choice, whilst she step by step involves phrases with the truth that she’s on her personal.
Brazilian director Walter Salles.
Shutterstock
On this manner, the movie is a uncomplicated tribute to a “feminine” politics of resilience. This suits the desire for a linear biopic over center of attention on fraught alliances and betrayals that can have decided the process Nineteen Seventies political existence in Brazil.
In spite of its stark material and struggling heroine, the unfashionable pleasures of I’m Nonetheless Right here shape one of the most movie’s most powerful facets. The measure of the circle of relatives’s loss is given via a sweeping first act. In spite of the all too readable indicators of what’s to come back (the movie opens with Eunice taking part in a solitary swim in crystalline waters, disturbed via the sound of helicopters soaring above), the viewer is invited to reside within the joyous provide of the Paiva family.
The dynamic camerawork captures the power of the kids, connecting the gap of the seashore with the open-doors area the place Eunice and Rubens act as genial hosts for his or her pals.
Via references to the colourful tropicália musical motion the movie celebrates and mourns no longer handiest the centrality of song to Brazilian cultural existence, however the tastes of a worldly, white liberal heart magnificence (to which Salles additionally belongs) whose lives and aspirations have been reduce quick via the dictatorship.
Marcello Rubens Paiva.
Harald Krichel / Wikipedia
Torres’s real-life mom, the embellished Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro, performs the older Eunice within the movie’s final scenes. The fit is close to very best, as they each command the similar intense but guarded glance.
Eunice’s persona arc indicates the country’s upward thrust to awareness. She is going again to check in her forties, turning into a legal professional running on behalf of the rights of indigenous girls and in reinforce of the households of the disappeared.
This non-public engagement in justice and reparation is blighted via dementia. In 2014, the nonagenarian Eunice performed via Montenegro is a silent, wheelchair-bound Alzheimer victim. This epilogue, shot in bleached virtual textures vividly contrasts with the colourful reminiscences captured within the (recreated) Tremendous-8 motion pictures shot via the Paivas.
As Brazil pulls itself in combination after the dual catastrophes of COVID and Bolsonarism, I’m Nonetheless Right here’s cautionary story for the prevailing could also be curtailed via the truth that its emotional core is positioned so firmly in mourning its previous, depicted as a idyllic second of happiness and optimism sooner than Brazil used to be robbed of its long run.
