‘I’m Still Here’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Hi, I’m Walter Salles, and I’m the Director of “I’m Still Here.” We are 30 minutes into the film, in the family home at the heart of the story. Eunice Paiva is portrayed by Fernanda Torres and Rubens Paiva by Selton Mello. Everything here conveys a sense of normalcy: the light, the sounds from the beach, the intimacy of the dialogue. But then this harmony is broken by the invasion of the house, by military police. Now hand-held, the camera relays the instability of the situation, pulsing with the characters. Rubens is told that he will be taken for an interrogation. He tries to feign that the situation is under control, but we sense it’s not. For the first time in the film, Eunice’s vulnerability surfaces. It is from here that Eunice’s arc begins to take shape. From this point onward, the entire scene revolves around subtraction. Subtraction of light as the curtains are shut, subtraction of sounds from the outside. Subtraction of music. When one of the couple’s five kids, Nalu, enters the house with a friend, both Eunice and the military officers try to pretend that normalcy still exists, but it no longer does. Nalu, played by Barbara Luz, leads us to the father’s room. It’s a vital scene, the last conversation between a father and his daughter, staged as the real Nalu told me it happened. There’s a strange intimacy in this exchange, underlined by the daughter’s affection and the father’s desire to prolong this moment. And then we understand why the intimacy was illusory. This is an improv created on the spot with actor Luiz Bertazzo He begins to peek into the family’s intimacy. Moments like this breathe life into the sequence. Rubens reappears, preparing to be taken away for questioning. He tries once again to create a sense of ordinariness. Here, the last embrace between Rubens and Eunice is framed by the military officers, emphasizing a sense of suffocation in what was once a safe place, the family house. This is the first of the only two close-ups in the entire film. We saved it for the last glance between Rubens and Eunice. From here on, we are with her. “I’m Still Here” becomes her film.