QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM VENICE

Based on the eponymous memories of Marcelo Rubens Paiva, a renowned Brazilian writer, I’m Still Here tells the story of his father’s disappearance during the oppressive military regime that ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985. Walter Salles (the man behind the 1998 Golden Bear winner Central Station) is on the director’s seat, crafting a film that’s dramatically and artistically superior to his most acclaimed piece, and also to other Brazilian films dealing with the oppressive tactics of the dictatorship, and their repercussions for underground activists and ordinary Brazilians alike. Cao Hamburger’s The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2006), about a child unable to grasp that his militant parents were kidnapped, and Wagner Moura’s more recent Marighella (2019), about the armed struggle against the regime, never reached the same heights.

The story begins in 1970. Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) is happily married to former Brazilian congressman Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello). He was ousted from Brazil’s federal Parliament after the 1964 military coup, and lived in exile for a couple of years. he then returned to his native Brazil in order to join Eunice and their five children, and stayed away from politics.

This 135-minute historical drama begins in an upbeat note. The family of seven, and their devoted maid Zeze, enjoy life to the full. They work, study, go to school, play volleyball and table football. They rescue a street dog called Pimpao, who becomes the family’s cherished mascot. The first 30 minutes of the film are vibrant and boisterous, featuring a powerful soundtrack consisting of Brazilian and international tunes from the time. Gal Costa, Erasmo Carlos, Tom Ze, Tim Maia and Os Mutantes fill their lives with joy. The girls dance to Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s dirty Je t’Aime Moi Non Plus, with a family friend noting: “I’m glad they don’t speak French”. Remarkably, all songs are diegetic. The family loves dancing, in a typical display of Brazilian unbridled swagger and joi-de-vivre.

The problem is that Rubens has not stayed away from his activist duties in their entirety. Unbeknownst to his family, he helps to communicate the horrors perpetrated by the government to foreign media, while also aiding friends in exile. The cost of his “subversive” behaviour is very dear. One day, several army thugs invade his house and arrest Rubens, Eunice and their second eldest daughter (the primogenit Vera was sent to London a few months earlier, precisely because her parents feared that she could become involved in political activism). Mother and daughter are tortured in a secret location. They return home a few days later, yet there is no sign of daddy. A long period of fear and uncertainty ensues, as the family longs for the missing father, and hope for his safe return. Marcelo is the only male and the youngest of the five, and he only has a vague grasp of the developments. He thinks his father is on a business trip. Eunice makes every effort in order to ensure that life goes on as usual, and that Rubens rejoins the family.

Torres deliver a heart-wrenching performance as a woman desperate to save her husband, while also shielding her five children from the shocking and painful truth. This very strong female character holds herself together in an attempt to craft a sense of relative normality in the house. Music and joy gradually seep back into their lives as they move to Sao Paulo. Eunice becomes a human rights lawyer and devotes her life to investigating the actions of the regime, and to protecting those failed by their own nation. Music finally makes a return. The warble of Cesaria Evora, Tim Maia, Roberto Carlos and Caetano Veloso injects Eunice and her children with a renewed sense of livelihood. The outstanding film score is guaranteed to be made available on CD and digital platforms.

Twenty-five years later, we see a wheelchair-bound Marcelo (now played by Antonio Saboia) signing copies of his latest book. His mother finally finds some sort of closure, if a very morbid one. The movie wraps up with an octogenarian Eunice. Surrounded by children and grandchildren, the old and frail matriarch (now played by 94-year-old Fernanda Montenegro, Brazil’s greatest actor, dubbed the “grande dame of Brazilian theatre and cinema”, and the real-life mother of Fernanda Torres) communicates with her eyes the suffering and the resilience that shaped her life. This isn’t the first time that mother and daughter played the same character at different stages of the lives. They did precisely the same in The House of Sand (Andrucha Waddington, 2005). Montenegro also played an older version of the film protagonist in Karim Ainouz’s more recent The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao (2021). Neither film dealt with the dictatorship. To boot, she starred in Walter Salles’s Central Station, and is the only Portuguese-speaker in history to receive a Best Actress Oscar nod.

The tone of I’m Still Here is extremely realistic, with excellent actors on all levels, and a very convincing reconstruction of Rio de Janeiro in the early 1970s. The movie is neither didactic nor exploitative. We witness Eunice’s predicament in prison for a few days. She has a nozzle attached to her head, and is then locked in solitary confinement inside a completely dark room, unable to work out the time of the day or the duration of her detention. Her only connection to the outside world are the screams of fellow prisoners. Yet Salles spares viewers the most sordid and graphic details of the torture to which people were routinely subjected.

The five people who subjected the Paiva family to short-term physical and long-term psychological torture have been identified, and never punished. Brazil is one of the few countries of South America that gave amnesty to military torturers, in what many consider a major failing of democracy. This impunity helped to create dictatorship-worshipping and torture-loving figures such as Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president between 2019 and 2023. The film title refers to the survivors of the dictatorship and their tormentors alike. They are both still out there. The victims and their perpetrators freely roam the streets of the largest country of Latin America as I write this. I’m Still Here is a cinematic tour-de-force and also a powerful weapon for change in Brazilian politics. There can be no real change and democracy until the sadistic criminals of the past have been duly punished.

I’m Still Here just premiered in the Official Competition of the 81st Venice International Film Festival. I hope it wins the event’s top prize, the Golden Prize. This would be a much-deserved and novel prize for Brazilian cinema.