Fernanda Torres
“I’M STILL HERE” My rating: A-(Netflix)
137 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-17
Audiences have the habit conflating big moments with great acting. Indeed, the history of Oscar wins suggests that if you want a statuette, you’d best come up with a few barn burning peel-off-the-paint moments.
The Brazilian “I’m Still Here” (it was nominated for Best Picture and Best International Feature, winning in the latter category) takes another approach entirely.
Walter Salles’ film (screenplay by Muriel Hauser, Heirtor Lorega and Marcelo Rubens Paiva) tells a hugely dramatic real-life story by concentrating not on the big moments but on the little ones. The results are quietly devastating.
This is the story of one family living through the two-decade reign of terror of a military junta that ruled Brazil from the early 1970s. During that period more than 20,000 citizens were arrested and tortured; nearly 500 were executed without trial.
The film’s first 40 minutes are largely devoted to depicting the middle-class lives of Rubens Paiva, an architectural engineer and former member of Congress, his wife Eunice (Oscar-nominated Fernanda Torres) and their five children.
They live in a big house just yards from Rio’s fabulous beach in the shadow of Sugarloaf. The grownups are deeply in love and enjoy entertaining friends. The kids are a rowdy bunch who practically live in the ocean and adopt a lost dog. It’s pretty damn idyllic.
But there are cracks in this blissful picture. The Paivas’ family friends are nervous liberals; some plan to leave Brazil to avoid right-wing oppression. And while driving with her friends the oldest daughter finds herself caught up in a military dragnet as authorities search for rebels who have kidnapped a foreign diplomat.
Papa Rubens periodically gets unexplained phone calls asking him to receive or deliver unidentified documents. We never will learn just what that was all about.
It all comes to a head with the arrival on the doorstep of armed men in civilian clothes who announced that Rubens is needed to give testimony. He is taken away while several of the interlopers hang around the house, rifling through closets and drawers and generally terrifying the family.
Within a few days Eunice is herself dragged to a military prison where she spends nearly two weeks wallowing in filth and listening to the screams of the tortured; each day a quietly intimidating interrogator has her thumb through a thick book of mug shots, demanding to know if she recognizes any of the faces.
To her queries about the whereabouts of her husband, she is always told: “I do not have that information.”
If this story had been told by an American there would undoubtedly have been some dramatic fireworks. Eunice would go to court to demand the truth about her husband’s disappearance. There would be clashes between rebels and the authorities.
But if any of that happened, in this retelling it occurs offscreen. The fierce focus is on Eunice and how she deals with her confrontation with institutionalized evil. And Torres pulls it off not with big moments but with small ones, with a careful accumulation of details that are registered in the eyes, in subtle body language. This is a woman who must simultaneously nurse a terrible loss and somehow remain strong for her children.
“I’m Still Here,” which follows the Paiva family for nearly 40 years, has been impeccably acted on all fronts. Each of the family’s offspring get a few telling moments, and one must reluctantly admire the chilling work of the actors portraying the blandly terrifying torturers.
Finally, it’s impossible to watch the film without looking at the United States teetering on the brink of dictatorship and wondering if our own citizens will be disappeared.
Brenca Vaccaro, Susan Sarandon, Vince Vaughn, Lorraine Bracco and Talia Shire
“NONNAS” My rating: B- (Netflix)
111 minutes | MPAA rating: PG
Vince Vaughn, who in his three-decade career has specialized in playing smarmy jokesters, takes a more low-keyed approach in “Nonnas.”
Basically he lets four veteran actresses do the heavy comedic lifting while he plays it straight. It works.
“Nonnas” is inspired by the real life story of Joe Scaravella, an unnmarried NYC transit worker who, after the death of his beloved mother, decided to use his inheritance to open a restaurant…one in which real Italian grandmas (“nonnas”) cook their traditional family recipes.
Problem is, Joe knows virtually nothing about the restaurant biz and makes misstep after misstep, in the process that nearly alienated his best bud (Joe Manganiello) and his wife (Drea de Matteo), who have imprudently risked their life savings on Joe’s dream.
The nonnas Joe recruits are a colorful mixed bag. The scratchy-voiced Roberta (Lorraine Bracco, almost unrecognizable) is a grump looking to spend a few hours outside her retirement community. Teresa (Talia Shire) is a timorous former nun. Gia (Susan Sarandon) brings a bit of blowsy glamor as Gia, who runs her own beauty salon. And chatty Antonella (Brenda Vaccaro) introduces Joe to his love interest, a law student (Linda Cardellini) who helps him over some legal hurdles.
The nonnas bitch and kvetch and engage in geographical rivalries (apparently Sicilians don’t get along with Mainlanders), but eventually all fall behind Joe on his march to success.
The resulting film is a pleasant blend of comedy and pathos, with writers Liz Macci and Jody Scaravella and director Stephen Chbosky never going overboard on either.
At the very least you’ll leave the movie craving a big plate of lasagna.
Greta Garbo as Mata Hari
“GARBO: WHERE DID YOU GO?” My rating: C (Netflix)
90 minutes | No MPAA rating
As a fan of Old Hollywood I jumped at the chance to learn more about Greta Garbo, who throughout the 1930s was not only Hollywood’s best-paid actor but also widely regarded as the most famous woman on Earth.
But the Swedish-born star gave it all up after 15 intense years, retiring in 1941 and spending the rest of her life avoiding the limelight.
Why? That’s the question posed by Brit director Lorna Tucker’s documentary, and my appetite was whetted by the news that Tucker had managed to get her hands on Garbo’s private correspondence, home movies and other material never before seen by the public.
Alas, the answer Tucker comes up with his hardly revelatory. Basically, Garbo got sick of being hounded by the press — this was before the term paparazzi had been coined — and decided to bail from the high-profile rat race. She lived a long life, had a lover who protected her, and enjoyed a small coterie of extremely loyal friends who would be cut loose if they should spread info about her private life.
What really chaps my ass, though, are the artsy/fartsy flourishes Tucker has packed into the tale.
Periodically we are addressed by a young woman (uncredited) with a platinum blonde Monroe ‘do who dresses in tight black clothing (like a waitress at a beatnik coffee shop) and stares piercingly at a wall full of Garbo photos, post-it notes and newspaper clippings. Apparently she’s attempting to sleuth out the story behind Garbo’s exile. Mainly what she is is irritating.
Equally off-putting is another actress wearing a creepy Garbo mask who strikes thoughtful poses while offscree Noomi Rapace reads from the actress’s correspondence.
Okay…most folks don’t know anything about Greta Garbo, so they’ll learn a few things from this movie. But only at the risk of getting really irritated.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 