Producers: Maria Carlota Bruno, Rodrigo Teixeira and Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre   Director: Walter Salles   Screenplay: Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega   Cast: Fernanda Torres, Fernanda Montenegro, Selton Mello, Valentina Herszage, Luiza Kosovski, Maria Manoella, Marjorie Estiano, Bárbara Luz, Cora Mora, Pri Helena, Gabriele Carneiro da Cunha, Olivia Torres, Guilherme Silveira, Antonio Saboia, Dan Stuhlbach, Thelmo Fernandes, Luiz Bertazzo, Humberto Carrão, Maeve Jinkings, Caio Horowicz, Camila Márdila, Charles Fricks, Luana Nastas, Isadora Ruppert, Daniel Dantas, Maitê Padilha and Carla Ribas   Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Grade: B+

The fate of those who disappeared under South American military dictatorships has already generated one Oscar-winner, Argentina’s “The Official Story” (1985).  Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” may well be the second.

It focuses on a single case, that of Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), who was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro in January, 1971, supposedly for questioning about his involvement in leftist politics.  A trained civil engineer, he’d served for two years as a parliamentary member of the Brazilian Labor Party when a military coup occurred in 1964.  After going into self-exile for a time, he returned to Brazil and settled down with his family, his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) and his five children—daughters Vera (Valentina Herszage), Eliana (Luiza Kosovski), Nalu (Bárbara Luz) and Maria (Cora Mora), and son Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira). 

The first portion of Salles’ film emphasizes the happy life of the family, even as the dictatorship remained in place.  That’s explained in part by the fact that the script by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega is based on a 2015 memoir by Paiva’s son Marcelo.  But it undoubtedly also reflects director Salles’ own recollections: as an adolescent he spent time with the Paivas, and remembers the experience fondly; he portrays genial dinners and get-togethers with streams of friends and acquaintances, most of whom shared Rubens’ political views.  The conversations occasionally veer into touchy territory, but controversial observations are muted.  Meanwhile the youngsters’ play at the beach—sometimes captured in home movies taken by Vera—is carefree.  The affection in the household is obvious, despite the inevitable sibling squabbling.

Juntas are always concerned about dissidents, but in 1971 the Brazilian generals were especially on edge; an ambassador had recently been kidnapped, and roadblocks were set up to apprehend anyone who looked suspicious.  In fact, Vera and her friends had recently been stopped at one after a night on the town.  That incident was unsettling, but the arrival of three men to pick up Rubens was genuinely terrifying.  To make matters worse, Eunice and Eliana were also taken for questioning, and though the girl was quickly released, Eunice was kept in detention for twelve days and repeatedly pressured to identify people her husband might have been involved with.  Paiva himself disappeared into the system.

The rest of the film focuses on Eunice’s decades-long search for information on her husband’s whereabouts.  Most is devoted to the immediate aftermath, from Eunice’s return home to take a long shower and wash off the grime of the gloomy prison stay, through her initial futile attempts to discover her husband’s fate, to years of endeavoring to keep his arrest in the public’s mind and encouraging friends to do whatever they could to uncover the truth.  She earns a law degree and wages a persistent campaign for the truth about the disappeared to be brought to light even after the end of the dictatorship in 1985, in particular dismissing government claims that Paiva had been freed by insurgents shortly after his arrest.  The script pushes ahead first to 1996 and then to 2014, as the walls of official deception fall and the murder of her husband by the junta is finally acknowledged. 

The depiction of Eunice’s public career is accompanied by the portrayal of her as matriarch, keeping the family together as the years of Rubens’ absence go on interminably.  By the close she, the children and their families have once again emerged as a gregarious, loving clan, and Eunice, now confined to a wheelchair and suffering from Alzheimer’s, is shown expressing a flicker of recognition as she sees an image of Rubens on television in a report on those who resisted the dictatorship and paid the ultimate price.

Eunice is played in that final sequence by iconic actress Fernanda Montenegro, but it is her daughter, Torres, who carries the film as the character in her younger years.  It’s a towering performance that captures the steely resolve of the wife and mother as she struggles to keep the family together and continue her search for the facts first under the ruthless eyes of an authoritarian regime and then in a restored democracy in which she must fend off suggestions that perhaps it would be best to forget the past and concentrate on the future.  There are moments when she gives way to understandable rage—as when she pounds on the windows of a car posted outside the house to keep watch on her and the children—but for the most part she portrays Eunice with a restraint that nonetheless intimates the boiling anger inside.  The rest of the cast is excellent, whether those playing her children or the sinister men who arrest Rubens and staff the prison. Mello, as the husband involved in political matters he keeps from her in an effort to keep the family safe, makes his brief first-act role count; it is, after all, Eunice’s devotion to him and what he represented that drives her actions.

In its stateliness “I’m Still Here,” in telling this harrowing story of a family living under the darkness of dictatorship, mirrors the patience Eunice Paiva showed in seeking justice; Salles and editor Affonso Gonçalves are unafraid of somber slowness, which in some cases—the interrogation sequences, for example—creates almost unbearable tension.  Adrian Teijido’s cinematography aims for a gritty look that reflects the period—from the seventies onward—with the snatches of home movies adding to the roughness and the production design (Carlos Conti) and costumes (Cláudia Kopke) adding to the authentic feel.  Warren Ellis’ score, with its emphasis on piano and strings, adds a plaintive mood while adding to the suspense or jubilation as the narrative demands.

Given that Brazil slipped back into authoritarian rule with the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2019, a man who actually looked back with favor on the dictatorship and even tried to retain his hold on power after he lost a reelection bid—by a small margin—in 2023, the message that Salles’ film sends to his own country about political choices is especially potent.  The film presents a powerful indictment of dictatorial rule through a compelling portrait of how a brutal regime’s victimization of a single family became an inspiring story of resilience and resistance.              

Producer: Dimitri Rassam   Directors: Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière   Screenplay: Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière   Cast: Pierre Niney, Bastien Bouillon, Anaïs Demoustier, Anamaria Vartolomei, Laurent Lafitte, Pierfrancesco Favino, Patrick Mille, Vassili Schneider, Julien De Saint Jean, Julie De Bona, Adèle Simphal, Stéphane Varupenne, Marie Narbonne, Bruno Raffaelli, Abde Maziane and Bernard Blancan   Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Pictures

Grade: B+

So many movies today are violent revenge tales that it’s refreshing to turn to one that takes a granddaddy of the genre and does it proud.  This latest version of Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo,” which was first published in 1844-45 and has been filmed many times, is, despite a running-time of nearly three hours, necessarily a streamlined, simplified version of the extraordinarily dense and complex original, but it’s sumptuous and satisfying on its own.

Pierre Niney plays Edmond Dantès, who while serving on a French ship during Napoleon’s attempted return to power in 1815, rescues Angèle (Adèle Simphal), a shipwrecked woman, embarrassing the ship’s treasurer and current master, Danglars (Patrick Mille), who prefers to let her drown.  When the ship arrives at Marseille, its owner Morrel (Bruno Raffaelli) dismisses Danglars and promotes Dantès to the captaincy.  That enflames Danglars’ desire for revenge, and he has a card to play: a letter the late captain had entrusted to Dantès, compromising because of its Napoleonic sentiments.

When Edmond goes home to visit his father Louis (Bernard Blancan) and wed his fiancée Mercédès Herrera (Anaïs Demoustier), he’s arrested as a partisan of Bonaparte.  His cousin Fernand de Morcerf (Bastien Bouillon) vows to defend him against the charge, but when brought before prosecutor Gérard de Villefort (Laurent Lafitte) instead betrays him in hopes of marrying Mercédès himself.  Villefort also has reason to put Dantès away since Angèle is his sister, and her involvement in Napoleon’s attempted return could endanger his position, and her knowledge of his affair with Dangler’s wife is an additional problem.

So Edmond is unceremoniously sent to the infamous Château d’If prison, where he’s expected to die.  Instead he befriends the eccentric prisoner Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), who enlists him in an attempt to burrow their way to freedom, educates him in arts and letters over their eight years’ confinement, and tells him of a fabulous treasure secreted on the island of Monte Cristo.  When the Abbé perishes in a collapse of the tunnel, Dantès hides in his dead man’s body bag, which is tossed into the sea, allowing him to swim to safety.

Finding that Mercédès has married Fernand and borne him a son, Albert, Edmund returns to the sea to perfect his martial skills and travels to Monte Cristo, where he finds the treasure and uses it to create a new persona for himself as the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo.  Returning to France, he locates Angèle, whom her brother and Danglers had forced into prostitution; and though on verge of death, she reveals that she had saved the illegitimate son Villefort had tried to bury alive after his birth and placed him in an orphanage.  Edmond finds the young man, André (Julien de Saint Jean), and enlists him as an ally posing as the count’s ward Prince Andrea Cavalcanti.  He also enlists a beautiful young woman, Haydée (Anamaria Vartolomei), who, as will eventually be revealed, has cause to seek revenge against Fernand, who is now an illustrious general, just as Danglers has built himself a prosperous career as a shipping magnate. 

Thus prepared, Dantès undertakes a complicated revenge scheme against all who have wronged him.  It involves worming his way into Fernand’s good graces by saving his son Albert (Vassili Schneider) in a staged assault and then having Haydée seduce the young man.  That in turn gives him entrée into the circle of Danglars and Villefort, and an opportunity for André, in his princely guise, to romance Danglars’ daughter Eugénie (Marie Narbonne) while also harboring hostility to his father Villefort.

All comes to a head when Dantès arranges the collapse of Danglars’ maritime empire into his hands and the revelation of Villefort’s crimes at resultant trial.  There are complications—an impetuous act by André, the blooming of true romance between Haydée and Albert, the revelation of Haydée’s identity, a plea to Edmond from Mercédès, who has recognized her former fiancé—but a couple of well-choreographed duels, marked by rousing exhibitions of swordsmanship, end matters on a satisfying note. 

Those who have read Dumas’ massive novel will recognize how severely Delaporte and de la Patellière have abridged and altered the narrative: only Edmond’s impersonation of Lord Halifax is retained to any extent, and especially given the prominence put on little Maximilien Morrel (Joachim Simon) in the early meeting between Dantès and his father, it’s surprising, and disappointing, that Dumas’ treatment of his later life is simply excised.  But they’ve been generally faithful to its tone, and they’ve ably assumed the directorial reins wielded by Martin Bourboulon for the duo’s previous Dumas adaptation, the two part version of “The Three Musketeers.” 

They’ve carried over much of the crew—including production designer Stéphane Taillasson and costumer Thierry Delettre, as well as cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc—and visually the result is equally splendid, though far brighter and less mud-drenched than was the case in the earlier films.  Editor Celia Lafitedupont, who was replaced by Stan Collet in the second Bourboulon installment, returns, and manages to keep most of the plot convolutions reasonably clear, though there remain a few muddled moments, while veteran Jérôme Rebotier’s robust score possesses all the swagger one could wish.

As Dantès Niney cuts a figure more like a hawk than an eagle, but he captures the character’s cunning, and provides ample dash when required.  Mille, Bouillon and Lafitte are all hissable, with Mille coming across as particularly loathsome; Demoustier is a lovely, conflicted Mercédès, while  Schneider, Vartolomei and de Saint Jean make an unbearably handsome trio of youngsters.  Favino chews the scenery engagingly as the Abbé.

In sum, while some devotees of Dumas’ novel may regret the changes Delaporte and de la Patellière have made to the narrative, most viewers will find this “Count” an enjoyable variant of it.  

Incidentally, an eight-part English-language mini-series based on the book has just appeared on European television.  It’s directed by Bille August, whose 1988 adaptation of “Les Misérables” is one of the better adaptations of that book.  It will probably follow Dumas more closely, and one of the more enterprising streaming services should snap it up. Yet another “Count” would be most welcome.