Still Missing: Salles Returns with Survivors of the Dictatorship
“The dictatorship’s mistakes was to torture but not kill,” former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro proudly claimed in a 2016 interview, referring to the military dictatorship which created a dystopic reality for the country from 1964 to 1985. It was the sort of vicious absoluteness Bolsonaro gleefully reveled in during his 2019 to 2023 reign, an outrageousness earning him the moniker “Trump of the Tropics.” It was during these years Brazilian auteur Walter Salles was developing his first narrative feature in more than a decade, an adaptation of Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 book I’m Still Here, enhancing the importance of revisiting the contemporary dark ages we’re only a generation or so removed from. Paiva’s account relates the forced disappearance of his father Rubens Paiva in 1971 Rio de Janeiro. An ex-congressman hauled in for questioning due to his past political affiliations and suspected alliance with oppositional forces, Paivas was murdered during questioning and authorities tried to deny he was ever arrested in the first place. Salles’ film centers on his wife, Eunice Paivas, starring a compelling Fernanda Torres, who dominates nearly every frame.
I’m Still Here is unfortunately a familiar saga, a narrative comrade to countless recent films recuperating travesties occurring at the same time nearby in Chile and Argentina. Whereas the angle of many of these narratives tends to be via procedural or violent reenactments capturing the intense distress and anxiety inflicted upon citizens of these countires, Salles focuses on the survivor’s side of the story. Fernanda Torres (who won Best Actress in Cannes for I Know I’ll Love You, 1986) gives the kind of performance destined to be hailed as one of her career’s greatest highlights (and will likely make her better known abroad). Her husband’s contributions to the resistance, which includes receiving packages needing to be exchanged between clandestine sources, is barely noticeable in their bustling home by the beachfront.
In Brazil, 1970, life seemingly goes on for most of the populace who’ve grown accustomed to living under the military dictatorship established in 1964. But there’s a constant unease boiling over in the news. A second foreign ambassador has just been kidnapped in exchange for the release of seventy prisoners. Roadblocks searching for the assailants are ruthless and aggressive. For the most part, the Paivas family seems to live outside of this frequency. Eunice entertains family friends, baking a customary soufflé which seems to feed endless mouths, including those of her five children. But she’s grown anxious about current events, and opts to let their eldest child, Vera (Valentina Herszage), leave for London with their friends who are shuttering their book store to get out of the country (including Maeve Jinkings, in a surprising tertiary role). Her younger children are preoccupied with a stray dog they’ve inherited from the beach, while her husband Rubens (Selton Mello) is a successful engineer, seemingly absorbed with his work. They receive a lot of phone calls and a late night knock on the door with packages for Rubens doesn’t rouse suspicions amongst themselves.
And then, suddenly, their world is upended when plainclothes representatives of the army seize Rubens one day, stating he needs to accompany them for a deposition. Several men remain behind in their house to keep watch over Eunice and her kids. Days later, she’s also taken in for questioning with her second eldest daughter, forced to wear hoods and kept isolated in a cell where they can hear the sounds of others being tortured. Eunice is kept for several weeks and required to look at endless mug shots to identify names for the police. When she’s released and Rubens still is not home, she’s able to hire a lawyer, and with a support network of friends, pressures the police so she can locate him. But now they deny having arrested him, sending Eunice down a rabbit hole for evidence to the contrary. As a year passes, and with no income, Eunice sells the house, moves her kids to Sao Paolo and goes back to university to become a lawyer at the age of forty-eight, going on to have a successful career championing indigenous rights and environmental issues. And, twenty-five years later, she finally gets acknowledgment of her husband’s demise by receiving his death certificate in 1996.
I’m Still Here reflects Salles’ interests in examining remnants of the past, from a transformational road trip for a youthful Che Guevara in 2004’s The Motorcycle Diaries to adapting Jack Kerouac’s seminal Beat Generation odyssey On the Road (2012). But there’s an imperativeness to his latest venturem, a pertinent film which excels when it feels it’s mainlining an intimate, lived-in experience.
Unfortunately, Salles doesn’t quite calibrate how to process later ‘events’ effectively. The 1970 segment is the film’s strongest segment, and the film’s energy wanes drastically when it jumps forward twenty-five years to 1996, when Eunice finally receives her husband’s death certificate. We fast forward through notable updates in the family, namely an accident which left author Marcelo tetraplegic.
Salles then fades to 2014 for a final moment with Eunice, now played by Fernando Montenegro, a reunion between actor and director following her phenomenal Academy Award nominated turn in 1998’s Central Station. But these 1996 and 2014 segments feel tacked on and ungainly, despite their awkward attempt to perform a sense of closure. Perhaps it’s because Salles also had a personal relationship with the Paiva family. Or perhaps there’s just no easy way to convey their resiliency and success while those responsible for the murder of Rubens Paiva, while charged, remain unpunished.
Reviewed on September 1st at the 2024 Venice Film Festival (81st edition) – In Competition section. 135 Mins.
★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
