PREMISE
A mother is forced to reinvent herself when an act of arbitrary violence shatters her family’s life during the tightening grip of a military dictatorship in Brazil in 1971.
THE GOOD STUFF
FERNANDA TORRES- I was curious about seeing this film to see if this performance was worth an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe win, and it SO is. Torres is an actor of great power, and she can convey so much emotion with a half smile or an eye twitch. There’s a scene in this movie where she’s been crying into a couch, and somebody walks in on her. That character asks her if she’s okay when she obviously isn’t, and you can see her swallow that sadness for the sake of appearing to be strong in that moment for the sake of the other character. There’s a shower scene in this movie where she has a full-blown meltdown, sees her son in the doorway, and, like a light switch, the sadness is swallowed yet again, and she instantly reverses course differently than she did any other scene.
There are many long stretches in this film where her character is not speaking, yet her close-ups convey SO much emotion even though her body is barely moving. I’m not familiar with Fernanda Torres’s resume, but I feel that I need to be. If this isn’t the best work of her career, then she may be one of the most underrated actresses in the game.
THE SECOND ACT- The second act of this film is pretty f****** awesome. It is the story of a matriarch trying to keep her family from completely unraveling after a VERY traumatic event while conducting a private investigation as to why that traumatic event occurred. It is here where the film’s pace ramps considerably, and the story is at its most compelling. Torres is compelling throughout this film, but her performance and storytelling are at their peak here. The huge problem with this movie is….
THE BAD STUFF
THE 1st & 3rd ACT- I’M STILL HERE is a story told in three parts. The first act is the story of a family. The second act is aforementioned, and the third act is the effect of the family on the events of the second act. This is mostly an ensemble piece in the first and third act with characters that we know but aren’t necessarily engaging. A loving, intelligent, and a delightfully embracing family…. That isn’t all that interesting as individual characters.
When the second act happens, mostly the Fernanda Torres fireworks show, the story is much more focused. But when we’re telling the story of the family itself, it feels like we’re narratively tennis-balled between six different characters that aren’t given nearly as much attention by the film’s events as Torres. It seems this movie is hell-bent on trying to be an ensemble piece more than a character study, and It suffers from it greatly. And that is because…
THE UGLY STUFF
PACING- I’m still here is a GLACIALLY slow paced film in the first and the third act. Things get repetitive quickly, and nothing happens narratively when it comes to focusing on these individuals in the family. Realistically speaking, you could have probably shaved off 30 to 40 minutes of this film between the first and third acts and got a more compelling story. And worse than that, there are TWO time jumps in the third act, and the film’s postscript explains that many interesting things happen to the Torres character in between the time jumps that would have made a more interesting movie than the one we just saw.
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I get that this is the kind of old-school coming-of-age storytelling we used to get back in the day and the aesthetics of the film double down on how old-school it really wants to be. The aesthetics even make it look like it was filmed in the 1970s, and once the time jumps happen, you can tell how much clearer and modernized the cinematography is. All of that is respectable.
But this is a one-woman show. Without this Fernanda Torres performance being what it is, this would be an impossible movie to recommend, even to those who are used to old-school-style storytelling. Nothing here is outright horrible, but only a tiny chunk of it is relatively interesting.Â
I’M STILL HERE is in theaters now
