How do you keep going in the face of the unimaginable pulses that run through Walter Salles’ film, “I’m Still Here”? The film is playing at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center, starting Feb. 7. It is a true story, based on the biography of Marcelo Rubens Paiva, that pulls back the veil on the frightening military dictatorship in Brazil.
There is the merest ominous hint of what will come when “I’m Still Here” opens. In the sparkling waters of Rio de Janeiro in 1970, a woman blissfully floats on her back, with the sounds of joyful beachgoers off in the distance. Treading water, she suddenly hears a helicopter far overhead, and looks up. But within moments, we’re on the shore with her children and friends, applying Coke as suntan lotion, playing volleyball, and generally horsing around.
The woman, Eunice Paiva (played by Fernanda Torres), and her husband, ex-Congressman Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), are heads of a rambunctious clan of four daughters and a young son. The family is close, endlessly affectionate, and at ease in their busy lives. The children are surrounded by friends, and life is good, or so it seems at first. One evening, the oldest daughter and her friends, returning from a night out, are roughly pulled over by the dictatorship’s authorities. They are lined up against a wall in the dark, and the soldiers shine a blinding flashlight at each of their faces, comparing them to the photographs on a poster labeled “Terrorists and Murderers.” We sigh in relief when the daughter returns home, shaken but all right. The news is playing on the television, announcing that yet another ambassador has been kidnapped, and so we assume this is why the kids were stopped.
Life goes on for the Paivas. In a home movie, we see the family gamboling about as they put stakes in the ground to delineate the outline for their big new house. Music on phonographs fills their living room. We see them at meals, gathering with their large circle of friends, and sweet moments of affection between Eunice and Rubens — memories in the making. Still, is everything all right? Although an engineer now by trade, Rubens receives several unexplained phone calls that pass as a mere blip amid the merriment of daily life. That is, until one night, armed men come to the door demanding that Rubens come in for questioning. Every instinct tells us this is not a mere deposition, as the men insist.
What follows is an unraveling of Eunice’s life in increasingly threatening circumstances. With the fierce love of a lioness for her cubs, she is forced to reinvent herself as she searches for answers about her husband’s disappearance while trying to maintain the family. The pain increases for everyone as time goes by.
The film is beautifully paced and well-titled, leaving us to wonder whether “I’m Still Here” refers to Eunice, Rubens, or, in the long run, the family as a whole.
“I’m Still Here” opens at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center on Feb. 7. For more information see mvfilmsociety.com/2025/01/im-still-here.
