If you didn’t know the real story behind the Brazilian film I’m Still Here, newly nominated for three Academy Awards, you might at first mistake it for a different kind of movie – something breezier, an arthouse coming-of-age picture, maybe. The opening minutes, set in 1970 Rio de Janeiro, are intoxicating, a sun-bleached, Tropicália-grooving idyll that introduces the many members of the large and loving Paiva clan. Comically, there are so many kids, and so many of their friends, darting from the beach to their home a block away and back again, it takes a while to puzzle out how many Paivas there actually are: four girls and one boy (the latter, Marcelo, wrote the memoir the film is based on), along with dad Rubens (Mello), a playful, ever-grinning civil engineer, and mom Eunice (Torres), effortlessly elegant, unruffled, and so tender with her rowdy brood.
The camera in this preamble never seems to stop. It roams from beach to home, from room to room, from one lovingly chaotic scene to another, transmitting the feeling of a full house, a full life, running over with love. These are well-spent minutes. Because when tragedy strikes, we know exactly how much this particular, already dear family has to lose.
A chyron discloses from the first frame that the country is under a military dictatorship – a statement of fact, but also a hanging threat. You know something is coming for the Paivas, sooner or later. The trailer gives away the specifics – and of course, it’s a true story, one that is certainly familiar to Brazilians – but if you can go in unawares, you should. From that opening idyll, I’m Still Here switches tempo to white-knuckled thriller, anchored by a beautifully grounded performance by Torres. (She’s nominated for the Best Actress Oscar; in a circular bit of awards kismet, her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, who cameos here, was a Best Actress nominee herself 26 years ago for another Walter Salles film, Central Station.)
Through the meat of the movie, I’m Still Here is unassailable: a gripping story, sensitively performed, with outstanding production and costume design effectively reproducing the era. For most of the film, Salles and screenwriters Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega don’t shy from the “movieness” of what they’re making; it’s a master class in how to shape true-life material into riveting drama. It’s only in the back-end of the film, which jumps forward twice (first to 1996, then the 2010s), that the balance is off. An emotional distance opens up – in part, yes, by the necessary recasting of the now-grown children – but also because the film feels more duty-bound than narrative-driven. In wanting to honor its real-life heroes, I’m Still Here, as a work of drama, loses just a little of its potency.
This article appears in January 31 • 2025.