‘I’m Still Here’ Review: Walter Salles Avoids Manipulation to Tell a Moving Story of Family Trauma in the Face of Political Strife | Venice

When we’re asked what scares us the most, one of the answers we’re probably going to give is “I don’t want anything to happen to my family.” It’s obvious, and it’s natural. Family is a bond of blood, and no matter how we conduct our lives, we’ll always have a special bond with our parents, siblings, relatives. That is the reason why the tragedy of the desaparecidos, the disappeared, in the turbulent times of 1970s South America, with the military juntas that ruled in Chile, Argentina and Brazil is still resonant, and particularly terrifying. People who were considered political dissidents were taken from their homes, officially only for interrogations, and their families never got to see them again, leaving them into a state of psychological torture that would impact their lives in the most devastating ways.

When Brazilian director Walter Salles, known for the brilliant Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries – a biography of sorts of Che Guevara – read the book that inspired the film, he felt particularly touched by the story of the Paiva family and decided he would have to film it. The result product is Ainda Estou Aqui (I’m Still Here), which premiered in Competition at the 81^st Venice Film Festival. The respect he shows towards the Paiva family, with whom he’s also close, proves that he was the right person for this movie. He starts telling the story of the Paivas in the fateful summer of 1971, when Brazil was under a brutal, scary military dictatorship. Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), the man of the house, is a civil engineer, but he’s also a former congressman for the Brazilian Labour Party. Paiva had lived in exile for some time, but he decided to go back to Brazil, moving his family from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro.

Despite abandoning, or rather been forced to abandon, his political career, Paiva never ceased his interested in the politics of his country, and actively helping political exiles go back to their countries. Paiva has a devoted wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres), and five children, four daughters and a son. The oldest child, Vera, has come of age, and Rubens and Eunice are reflecting on the opportunity of sending her to London for some time. They even ponder on whether they should reach her there, because these are turbulent times for Brazil: the military junta has thousands of dissidents in jail, and the resistance has just kidnapped the Swiss Ambassador to start negotiations about the release of political prisoners. In the city of Rio and in the areas around it, there are police checks, and the political atmosphere is heating up. The Paivas try to lead an ordinary life, and Salles is quite meticulous in his description of this family as a healthy, close group of people: they play at the beach, they enjoy being in each other’s company, they have their own disagreements, but nothing unlike any other family. The house itself becomes a character, with its own personality: it’s a testament to the care Salles puts into the depiction of the Paiva household. He wants to tell their story, with no invasive intrusion from the filmmaker himself.

Of course, being the character that it is, the house is also the theater of meetings of political nature for Rubens. He may be a former congressman, but he’s still a citizen. He doesn’t really care if that is going to attract attention from the police, he still believes in his cause. It comes, sadly, to no surprise when three men associated with the army show up at his house. They need to take Rubens to an interrogation center to ask him some questions. The startling effectiveness of this scene lies in its matter-of-factly nature: it’s not sensationalistic, it is presented as inevitable, and even Rubens’ behavior makes sense here. He knows what is about to happen, and he tries to reassure his family in the calmest of ways. This is the moment where the film starts to look more closely at Eunice. What is she going to do now?

Eunice hopes that her husband will be back soon, but deep inside she knows that won’t happen. In fact, it gets worse. She and one of her daughters, Eliana, get taken to an interrogation center themselves: Eliana is freed after 24 hours, while Eunice gets held for 12 long days, where the only way to keep track of time is by making marks on the wall. While this may sound quite melodramatic, Salles’ approach is anything but: he is methodic and quite stoic, just like his protagonist Eunice. He wants to avoid the traps of emotional manipulation, and tells the story with a delicate, respectful tone.

It only makes sense that the portrayal that Salles makes of Eunice is that of a matriarch whose prime interest is that of keeping her family together. Even after her release from the detention center and witnessing the horrors of the tortures endured by the prisoners, she prioritizes the welfare of her family, while at the same time becoming an activist for civil and political rights. She never gives up on her husband, but the beauty of this particular character is that she doesn’t let this search consume her: she’s perfectly calibrated, and a lot of the merit must go to actress Fernanda Torres. Torres becomes Eunice, she embodies her every emotion with extraordinary efficacy while at the same time maintaining a certain stoicism that makes her performance special. With her, Eunice is a character not marked by despair but rather by strength, she reinvents herself not because she must go on but rather because she wants to go on, always keeping an immaculate dignity throughout the whole ordeal. These are little traits that give her a multifaceted personality: she’s a concerned citizen, a mother and a wife, a fully realized three-dimensional portrayal that would be fully deserving of a Volpi Cup for Best Actress.

Despite a prolonged and slightly unnecessary three-act ending, where veteran actress Fernanda Montenegro (and mother of Torres) appears as the 89-years-old Eunice, the main quality of Ainda Estou Aqui is that it tells a very sensitive story in a way that is informative and respectful: it’s never manipulative, it’s not indulgent, it’s actually rare to see a close-up in the movie, as the camera keeps at a dignified and respectful distance, because the focus is on the story, not on the emotion. The emotion flows naturally through the delicate direction given by Salles. It’s the way every family would love their story to be told.

Grade: A-

This review is from the 2024 Venice Film Festival where I’m Still Here had its world premiere. Sony Pictures Classics will release the film theatrically in the U.S.