Strong female lead: Fernanda Torres in ‘I’m Still Here’.
I’M STILL HERE ***1/2 (138 minutes) M
Living a normal, upper-middle suburban life with her large family a short walk from the beach in 1970, Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) has her contented life turned inside out when her devoted, hard-working husband Rubens (Selton Mello) is suddenly taken in for questioning.
With their home now hosting goons from the newly installed junta, Eunice and her oldest daughter are also hauled in by the army, duly trussed and hooded.
Repeated inquiries about the location and safety of her husband are met with hollow assurances and non-answers before the pair are returned home after a week of harrowing interrogation.
Up for Oscars including Best Film, Best International Film and – most justifiably – Best Actress, I’m Still Here unfolds as an excellent, tense period drama about the political upheaval in Brazil where thousands of people “disappeared” at the hands of the dictatorship that ran from 1964 to 1985.
With its focus firmly on the home front, journeyman director Walter Salles (Central Station; The Motorcycle Diaries) potently presents an absorbing slow-burn account of the psychological torture Eunice and her family experienced, the most searing aspect of which was not knowing what had happened to Rubens.
The film is anchored by the extraordinary, subdued performance from Torres, the defiantly dignified heart and soul of a fact-based story about political corruption and personal courage.
INSIDE *** (104 minutes) MA
As grim and heavy as you’d expect a prison drama to be, Inside is a solid, strongly directed, singularly pungent tale involving a long-termer (perfectly played by the indefatigable Guy Pearce) who instructs a younger inmate about how to do society a favour by dispatching a fellow resident who is universally reviled.
With the prison ambience reeking with hard-edged authenticity, director/writer Charles Williams blends into the reality of life inside the less-than-rosy prospect freedom can present.
Williams demonstrates a mastery of behavioural nuance, the scene between Pearce and Toby Wallace (playing his estranged son) serving as a prime example. It’s just two guys sitting on a couch, yet the few words they exchange over a few minutes strip bare two entire life stories.
Pearce turns in an unsettling performance alongside Cosmo Jarvis as his young, dented charge.
It’s heartening to see a quality Australian film so early in the year, and here’s hoping for more.
That said, it is yet another local film appealing to the outer rim of the audience. There need to be more aiming for the centre.
Road trip: The happy gang from ‘The Last Journey’.
THE LAST JOURNEY ** (92 minutes) PG
A nice, well-intentioned film with a warm, feel-good vibe and a bitter-sweet tinge, The Last Journey is a regrettable example of a kind-natured personal documentary that aims for the heart but strikes that organ where too much sentimental saccharine can cause tummy upsets.
Filmmaker Filip Hammar is worried his long-retired dad Lars has lost the zeal for life and so, with his filmmaking partner Fredrik Wikingsson in tow, packs the former teacher into a comically tiny car for a road trip across France to revisit favourite spots, hoping to reinvigorate the old man’s spirits.
After a false start that lasts about half an hour – Lars takes a tumble and has to go to hospital – the jaunt then stumbles through a series of contrived set-ups as Filip tries way too hard replicating things from his dad’s past experiences in France, hoping to pep him up.
Despite the obviously sincere intentions, the whole enterprise feels forced, with Filip’s anguished reaction to his father’s inability to chop vegetables like a chef being especially tough to buy. Did the diminished dexterity of a man in his 80s really come as a heart-breaking revelation?
Given the premise and the mention early on of an “organic process”, the road trip also feels way over-produced with too much syrupy music, too many aerial shots of the car and too many multi-camera scenes. There’s very little spontaneity and virtually no surprises with the whole thing feeling synthetic, as though it was storyboarded and scripted.
As for Lars, he’s lovely old bird but we don’t hear enough from him reflecting about his life. Instead, what we get is way too much focus on the filmmakers who should have taken themselves out of centre-frame.
All up, what’s intended as a scenic road trip through landscapes emotional and physical, The Last Journey doesn’t quite play on the heartstrings the way it clearly wants to.