I'm Still Here

When the Academy Award nominations were announced a few weeks ago, the only Best Picture nominee that I hadn't seen yet was I'm Still Here (click on the titles for my commentaries on Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Perez, Nickel Boys, The Substance, and Wicked) so I decided to see it as part of a double feature at the Broadway last night.  It is incredibly moving with a powerful performance from Fernanda Torres.  In 1970, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a former congressman ousted by a military dictatorship in Brazil, is living in Rio de Janeiro near the beach with his wife Eunice (Torres) and his five children, Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira), Vera (Valentina Herszage), Eliana (Luiza Kosovski), Nalu (Barbara Luz), and Maria (Cora Mora), while working as an architect.  His happy and boisterous house is always filled with family and friends but, unbeknownst to Eunice, Rubens is active in the underground resistance to the regime.  Rubens is eventually arrested in a military raid and is "disappeared" but, when Eunice inquires about his whereabouts, she and her daughter Eliana are brought in for questioning and she is tortured for several days before being released.  Without a definitive answer about the fate of her husband, Eunice (who cannot even access her bank account without her husband's signature) must hold her family together while searching for answers which do not come for decades.  This is a straightforward story about resilience in the face of unimaginable terror but what makes it so devastating is the slow and measured introduction to this loving family and their idyllic life together before everything changes with a knock on the door.  You feel the weight of what has happened to them because you know how happy they were before their husband and father was taken from them.  There are so many scenes of quiet heroism as Eunice makes difficult decisions but I found it absolutely heartbreaking when she tells the children that they have to move away from their house in Rio.  Torres gives an incredibly nuanced performance in which you see every emotion Eunice is feeling on her face (the scene in the ice cream shop as she observes happy families all around her just about did me in) and she is definitely deserving of the Best Actress nomination.  I would highly recommend seeking this out.

Note:  Now that I have seen all of the Best Picture nominees, I want Dune: Part Two to win but, with the exception of Emilia Perez, I wouldn't mind if any of them did.