I’m Still Here is another Best Picture nominee, which has received high praise from various film festival circuits, including the Venice International Film Festival, where it won Best Screenplay. It’s also been named one of the top five international films by the National Board of Review.
The movie also recently scored three Oscar nominations for Best International Film, Best Actress for Fernanda Torres, and Best Picture. I concur with all these accolades as it is an amazingly profound film that leaves an impact due to Torres’ performance and a story filled with pathos as one family searches for answers to severe injustice.
Based on the memoir of Eunice Paiva, Torres stars in this story as a mother who lives with her congressman husband Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) and five children in Rio De Janeiro in 1970 and 1971. The country is undergoing an overthrow of its government, and it threatens their peaceful way of life.
Rubens is arrested and taken away from his family not long after the kidnapping of the Swiss ambassador. He disappears and Eunice desperately wants to find him, but she faces roadblock after roadblock in an attempt to bring him home.
Things go from bad to worse for the family as Eunice herself is arrested after she investigates his disappearance, but she’s released from jail after her family and friends demand her release. She later discovers that Rubens has been killed but chooses to keep it a secret from her children.
Eunice does her best to keep the family afloat while continuing to discover the motivations behind her husband’s demise. Torres crafts a portrait of a sympathetic woman who portrays this real-life figure with dignity, heart and determination.
The movie is spoken in Portuguese with English subtitles, but the writing and acting are so strongly delivered that it’s hardly a distraction.
I’m Still Here is a movie that succeeds on two levels: It demonstrates one woman’s courage to be a beacon of light for her family and a warrior against a fatal iniquity. Torres knows how to be tough as steel but also how to be tender and empathic. To understand that is to understand the key message of the movie itself.
This is one of the rare instances in which a true story holds our attention with the unflinching realism of its tragedy and refuses to sensationalize its events to attempt to give the story an unnecessary oomph. It’s direct and pragmatic and doesn’t have everything tied up in a bow by the end.
I’m Still Here is wonderfully acted and directed, and it serves as a reminder of how much injustice there is in the world that still deserves a measure of closure.
Grade: A-
(Rated PG-13 for thematic content, some strong language, drug use, smoking and brief nudity.)
