Fernanda Torres and Fernanda Montengegro lead the way with remarkable performances in this fact-based story of family’s love and resilience under authoritarian rule in the 1970’s Brazil. Torres is strong, silent and powerful as Eunice Paiva. Even more notable is that Torres’ real mother, renowned Brazilian actress plays Eunice Paiva in her later years at the end of the film. Director Walter Salles has directed both the mother and daughter 25 years apart. Salles, a Brazilian, has also spoken out about human rights violations against artists and film makers around the world.
This film is based on the true story of Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 memoir “I’m Still Here.” With a screenplay by Milo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, Salles creates a simmering drama showing Eunice having to keep the family together while her loving engineer husband, political dissident Rubens Paiva becomes one of the “disappeared” during the military dictatorship in Brazil. His wife becomes a savvy activist protecting her family while trying to find and free her husband.
She had to keep everything under the radar, putting on a happy face to keep life as normal as possible for her children. Even when they tried to use her as an example by having the family look downtrodden in magazine photo, she insisted on all of them putting on a happy face.
After Rubens was taken away, Eunice and daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) were both arrested. Eunice was put in solitary confinement for 12 days, questioned repeatedly about her husband’s activities and his cohorts. They kept demanding her to name conspirators against the junta. She was unrelenting. In the film we see how she reinvented herself, becoming a lawyer and an expert on human rights, advocating for victims of repression, indigenous or not.
Fernanda Torres shows the smarts, strength and courage of a woman who would not bend, would not give up, who gave her family the strength to carefully keep going. Torres plays the role as noble and resolute, despite the tragedy of not knowing what was done with or to her husband.
The film shows both the natural beauty of Brazil juxtaposed with the stark ugliness and brutality of the prisons and life under the Military Dictatorship. Cinematographer Adrian Teijido shoots documentary style, using plenty of grainy, jumpy, camera home movies showing those shot by daughter Veroca (Valentina Herszage). It provides a view of this family through a very personal lens letting you experience the family’s love and pain of these young and old characters.
Salles follows Eunice through decades with Alzheimer’s in her elder years showing how her life journey has taken its toll. Both Torres and her famous actress mother, Montenegro, present a powerful portrait of Eunice maintaining strength and dignity, defiantly showing, I’m Still Here.
Sony Pictures Classics 2 Hours 16 Minutes PG-13
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