They say your father is the last person standing between you and God. In the Walter Salles-directed “Ainda Estou Aqui” (“I’m Still Here”), a father’s absence shapes the story of a family navigating the state murder of its patriarch, a dissident former politician named Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello). Set during the early-1970s infancy of Brazil’s 21-year military junta, the movie turns on the last night Rubens was seen by his wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres), and his five children. The ripple effects of his disappearance were the subject of a memoir by Rubens’ only son, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, on which the film is based. But while the screenplay by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega is informed by Marcelo’s perspective, it is not bound by it. Like the memoir, it unfolds through the eyes of Eunice, whose courage in searching for Rubens and reconstructing family life are its heart and soul.
“I’m Still Here,” Salles’ first feature film in over a decade, feels observational and intimate at once, reflecting the fact that the director knew the Paiva family as a child and spent time in the home where much of the movie is set. If he can echo the monumental impact of having a loved one snatched away by secret police without resorting to mawkish melodrama, it may be because he witnessed it firsthand. Eunice navigates the aftermath of her husband’s vanishing by ensuring that her children smile for the camera, lest they be perceived as perpetual victims. With Torres’ measured performance as its backbone — an embodiment of moral fortitude, she gracefully treads a tightrope between hope and anguish — the film is peppered with hints of shattering grief on the verge of piercing her resilient armor.
Rubens is arrested about half an hour into the film’s 135-minute runtime. For much of the initial act, Salles presents the family’s pre-arrest normalcy, intercutting pristine 35mm photography with handheld, grainy 8mm home movies of beachside frolic, like a memory of summer vacation soundtracked by the smooth tunes of Erasmo Carlos. During these scenes, Rubens is a jovial presence, especially around his kids. Yet there are hints of closed-door political discussions, intimations of the preordained harm coming his way.
“I’m Still Here,” Salles’ first feature film in over a decade, feels observational and intimate at once.
Once these elliptical hints of oppression become the film’s defining drama, Eunice is left to track down Rubens, maintain the family’s finances, fend off spies placed outside her gate and ensure her kids don’t fall into despair. What is perhaps most surprising about “I’m Still Here” is how little it’s actually concerned with unveiling the procedural mystery and technical nitty-gritties of the family’s search. For its intended Brazilian audience, the fate of the country’’s desaparecidos (“the disappeared”) is already known — like most desaparecidos, the real Rubens’ body will never be found. The question of his whereabouts is therefore less important than the question of whether Eunice and her family will ever find closure, emotionally or in the form of official acknowledgement. In the film’s second half, Salles’ dramatic North Star is the family’s open wounds. The realization that they are likely to fester hits gradually, then all at once.
“I’m Still Here” was made during Jair Bolsonaro’s term as president, which threatened to return Brazil to a ruthless military rule. It therefore serves as an emotionally riveting warning in the form of a story about the sudden hole left by a loved one’s disappearance, translating the cost of fascism into intimate terms. One moment, Rubens is there. The next, he simply isn’t, forcing the movie to tilt on its axis and compensate accordingly. It’s a notion that takes its time to set in, with no clear dividing line between denial and acceptance (each of Eunice’s children reacts differently). Only in later scenes — after a time jump of several decades — does the movie settle into a subtle, resurgent grief. The specter of loss defining the Paiva family moves beyond them, as Rubens goes from the father and husband they once knew, to a martyr and symbol. He belongs to history now. He is, in his own way, still here.