Director: Walter Salles

Stars: Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, Valentina Herszage, Luiza Kozovski

Adapted from Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 memoir of the same name, Walter Salles’ latest is a stirring study of resistance and forbearance. It begins in 1970 as former politician Rubens Paiva returns to Rio de Janeiro, after years of self-exile. Rubens had lost his job after the 1964 Brazilian military coup d’etat. Now he has returned, he and his wife Eunice (Torres) and their five children are living an idyllic life in their spacious beachside house with intellectuals and artists regularly dropping by. An engineer by trade, Rubens has returned to civil employment, but continues to support dissenting expats on the quiet. Following the kidnapping of a Swiss ambassador by left wing revolutionaries, a military raid takes place on Paiva’s house. Rubens is taken away for questioning and does not return. Eunice’s dogged attempts to find out what happened to her husband result in her arrest and temporary detainment. Her spirit undimmed, she continues to search for the truth about her missing husband while trying to maintain as normal a life as possible for the sake of her family. The Brazilian 70s milieu is effectively evoked by Carlos Conti’s rich production design and Adrian Teijido’s grainy textured cinematography, including super-8 family films taken by daughter Vera (Herzage) which convey a suitably idyllic, nostalgic feel. The picture is at its most effective and timely when it illustrates just how authoritarianism gradually begins to encroach on quotidian life, via shots of ominously hovering helicopters, military trucks barrelling down the road, and radio reports of kidnappings overheard in the background. Torres, the daughter of Fernanda Montenegro who starred in Salles’ classic ‘Central Station’, delivers a rousing portrait of a woman of rare fortitude and determination.

David Willoughby

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