Review: Fernanda Torres pulls off a miracle of maternal courage in ‘I’m Still Here’

Fernanda Torres in the movie “I’m Still Here.”

(Alile Onawale / Sony Pictures Classics)

Soufflé is almost ready at the Paiva household just across the street from the beach in sultry Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. From the unmistakably festive atmosphere within the home’s airy rooms, one wouldn’t guess the country is under a ferocious military dictatorship.

That Walter Salles, the acclaimed director of “Central Station” and “The Motorcycle Diaries,” first depicts the tight-knit family of “I’m Still Here” at their most ebullient, before tragedy strikes, pays off dramatic dividends in this remarkably life-affirming drama largely set in 1971 and based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Paiva (the Paivas’ only son). A contender for the upcoming international feature Oscar, “I’m Still Here” brilliantly distills an agonizing chapter of a nation’s recent past into a sophisticated portrait of communal endurance.

Already lauded for her quietly shattering performance with a surprise Golden Globes win (the first Brazilian actress to ever receive the prize), Fernanda Torres portrays Eunice Paiva, a mother of five who is married to former Congressman Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello). We see the pent-up worry on her face signaling incipient danger: Helicopters roam the city while news of kidnapped ambassadors pours from the radio.

Within the walls of the Paiva residence (the film was shot in the actual house that belonged to the family), Salles and his cast of both seasoned and fresh-faced actors create a vibrant, lived-in dynamic radiating with affection and carefree liberty. And because we’ve been so wonderfully immersed in the exuberance they are all about to lose, when the darkness reaches their doorstep, in the form of henchmen who take Rubens in for questioning, the contrast between who they were and who they become feels stark.

By that point, Mello has potently established the fatherly warmth his family will sorely miss. In that absence, memory becomes central to “I’m Still Here.” The narrative is interspersed with home movies shot on a 8 mm camera, immortalizing candid instances of leisure and love, the ones that truly matter. Not only are they indelible in the minds of the Paivas, but they are forever preserved in still photos, in Marcelo Paiva’s writing and now onscreen through Salles’ filmic rendition.

The director and cinematographer Adrian Teijido also make the home a shifting co-star and a physical metaphor for Brazil as a whole. Once a place where friends and family entered through perpetually open doors, the space becomes hermetic and airless when curtains are drawn to hide the men who have come to disrupt this idyllic refuge. Through them, the dictatorship instills fear and distrust to maintain power. Salles communicates the state-sanctioned distress by focusing on the family’s upended quotidian rituals.

Eunice responds by offering these goons lunch — maybe in the hope that their ordeal will end sooner, but also as a statement of the type of person she is even to those who might hurt her. (Eventually, she and one of her daughters are detained and interrogated, then released.) Those seemingly muted details about her rich personality come from Marcelo Paiva’s intimate reminiscences about his mother and the Paivas’ collective experience in the aftermath of Rubens’ disappearance, expertly adapted by screenwriters Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega.

Torres exudes the unflashy fortitude of a woman unable and unwilling to surrender to despair as the days and weeks go by. How can she when she must raise her children and seek justice for her husband, who may still be alive? Imparting masterful restraint, Torres makes Eunice’s few outbursts feel believably contained. As distanced from melodrama as possible, her performance is one of internalized grief.

And yet, in the midst of her hidden mourning, Eunice treats those around her with loving understanding, empathetic to their respective fears and the limitations of what they can do for her. She moves through the world with a humble resolve, unafraid of doing what needs to be done, never dwelling on what could or should have been done. At every turn, we recognize her desire to spare her kids from the sorrow she carries. A guardian of their tender hearts, she can only hide so much in an authoritarian reality.

Even mere moments after receiving crushing news, Eunice musters up a smile for her youngest daughter and the energy to take the whole gang out for ice cream, seeking to regain a semblance of what they used to have. That amalgamation of a graceful pride during a crisis and superhuman determination is crucial to Torres’ embodiment of Eunice’s inner force. And because she’s perceived as nearly unbreakable, when sorrow does slip through her eyes in a lost stare or a weighted silence, Torres’ expression is beautifully gutting.

Acting of this subtle caliber is rarely celebrated, but Torres unassuming turn has proved undeniable to anyone who watches it. For a film like “I’m Still Here” to emerge on the other side of the repressive Jair Bolsonaro presidency and be embraced at home and abroad so earnestly (it’s Brazil’s highest grosser since the pandemic) is testament to Salles’ assured directorial hand that treats the delicate subject matter with the seriousness it merits while highlighting humanity rather than brutality. There’s a striking elegance to his images in how they bring us closer to the people, not the horrors.

When a photographer suggests that the family pose with a somber demeanor for a shot that will be featured in an article about Rubens’ disappearance, Eunice refuses, instructing her children to smile broadly. Joy proves defiant to the shadowy oppressors who wish to see their “enemies” suffer. Eunice’s victory, as witnessed by Marcelo Paiva and resurrected by Torres (and, briefly, by Brazilian legend Fernanda Montenegro, Torres’ Oscar-nominated mother), is not just about survival but fostering a family united in adversity.

Resistance takes the form of lives well lived. In every laugh shared, in every new memory made and family photo taken, this clan honors those no longer physically present.