Brazil’s Carnival muse this year isn’t one of the divas or drum queens parading with the Rio de Janeiro samba schools. It’s Fernanda Torres, who’s competing for the best actress Oscar on Sunday.
The Oscars fall smack in the middle of Carnival, Brazil’s largest celebration, which runs through Tuesday. During the five-day revelry, the rest of the universe usually fades into the background as Brazilians cut loose and indulge.
Not this year, and the keen focus on the Oscars speaks to Brazil’s pride for its culture and desire to be recognized on the global stage.
“Just imagine, her winning the Oscar on Carnival Sunday. It’ll be a double celebration,” Clarissa Salles, 33, told The Associated Press while buying a replica Oscar statuette in Sao Paulo for her costume.
Torres is nominated for her performance as the lead in the Walter Salles-directed “I’m Still Here,” which is also nominated for best picture and best international feature. Excitement around the awards has prompted TV Globo, Brazil’s largest network, to resume live coverage of the ceremony after a five-year hiatus. It will forgo the nationwide airing of high-ratings Carnival parades, instead broadcasting the Oscars everywhere except Rio.
Bars and nightclubs across Brazil are organizing Oscar watch parties and results will even be shown on a big screen to the tens of thousands of spectators gathered at Rio’s Sambadrome for the parades.
“Today, all of Brazil only thinks about this,” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on his social media channels. “Everybody is cheering for ‘I’m Still Here’ and Fernanda Torres at the Oscars.”
As far away as the Amazon, an Indigenous community in the Inhaa-be village promoted a screening of the film on Friday. With singing and barefoot dance, the group made up mostly of women performed their war ritual followed by their victory ritual.
“We dance around the people, positioning our thoughts and emotions so that this energy can reach where it needs to go, which is to Fernanda Torres,” shaman A-yá Kukamíria said.
At one point, she fanned smoke over a sign featuring the golden statuette and the words: “The Oscar is ours!”
“A Movement”
Masks of Torres’ face, plus T-shirts and caps featuring her reaction to her Golden Globe nomination — “Life is worth it!” — are everywhere. The phrase appeared on a banner at Cordao do Boitata, one of Rio’s most traditional street parties.
She has even inspired entire Carnival street parties paying her tribute. Last Sunday, revelers in Rio carried a banner saying “Fernanda Torres’ Impersonators” while dressed as some of her beloved TV characters.
“That’s peak fame in Brazil — to become a Carnival costume,” Torres said Feb. 10 at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. “I see a lot of me in the streets. I’m proud.”
And plastic Oscar statuettes are flying off retailers’ shelves.
The Torres craze is “a feeling, a movement,” and an Oscar win would be like the national soccer team lifting a World Cup trophy, feminist writer Milly Lacombe, who chronicles sports and culture, said.
“Fractured by political divisions, Brazilians were thirsty for something that could unite them,” Lacombe said. “We didn’t know where it would come from. And it came from a very unexpected place — the Brazilian film industry.”
From TV roles to Oscar glory
Since its November release in the country, “I’m Still Here” has drawn over 5 million Brazilians to theaters. Last week, the film was still topping the Brazilian box office, second only to Marvel’s most recent “Captain America.”
It has won plaudits and awards abroad while, back home, it sparked a long-overdue reflection on the trauma and legacy of the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for more than two decades.
Torres stars as Eunice Paiva, the matriarch of an upper-class Rio family shattered by the dictatorship. In 1971, her husband, Rubens Paiva, a former leftist congressman, was taken into custody by the military and never seen again. Based on a book by their son, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the story follows Eunice’s lifelong pursuit of justice, by getting the government to admit that her husband died.
Torres, 59, first gained national recognition as a teenager acting in telenovelas. At 19, she became the first Brazilian to win best actress at Cannes for “Love Me Forever or Never.” Her success continued in theater and movies as she cemented her fame in sitcoms like “Os Normais” (Normal People) and “Tapas e Beijos” (Slaps and Kisses).
Her dramatic performance in “I’m Still Here” has reshaped public perception, surprising many with her depth and restrained performance, keeping her grief, anguish and despair simmering just beneath the surface. The film’s success — and her Golden Globe win — also sent viewership of her past sitcoms on TV Globo’s streaming platform through the roof, according to the network. And Torres’ scenes in those shows have been repurposed for countless viral memes ahead of the Oscars.
Sweet Justice?
To understand why Torres’ Oscar chances have ignited excitement in Brazil, one must first look to her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, 95, who appears as an aging Eunice Paiva in the film’s final scenes.
Montenegro is a national acting legend — Brazil’s Meryl Streep — who was a best actress Oscar nominee in 1999 for “Central Station.” The award instead went to Gwyneth Paltrow for “Shakespeare In Love” and many Brazilians ever since have harbored the belief that Montenegro was robbed.
“As the firstborn child of the reluctantly titled ‘Grande Dame of Brazilian Theater,’ Fernanda Montenegro, it seemed Fernanda Torres had little professional choice. Surprisingly, she forged her own path,” said journalist Pedro Bial, host of a prestigious late-night show on TV Globo, who was married to Torres in the 1980s.
“‘I’m Still Here’ is her most significant cinematic role and it surprised some of her fans who were used to her comedic style,” Bial added. “Brazilians now hope the Oscar will bring sweet justice, 25 years after her mother’s heartbreaking loss.”
A nation’s desire to be seen
No Brazilian has ever won best actor or best actress. To some extent, Torres’ international recognition is playing into some Brazilians’ desire for foreign validation of their greatness, according to Lacombe, the culture writer. It’s a sentiment that has surfaced from time to time in soccer, with Pelé, or in Formula One racing, with Ayrton Senna.
“We want to show that we exist, we deserve respect, and that what we create here is exceptional. Our culture is unparalleled,” Lacombe said.
Torres acknowledged that element of the Brazilian psyche in a November interview.
“Brazil has this ‘mongrel complex,’ this lack of communication with the world, but at the same time, it pities the world for not knowing what we know,” the actress told local news website UOL. “When someone breaks through that barrier and takes something deeply personal to us abroad, there’s this feeling of, ‘Look at what we have, look at how rich our culture is.'”
Clara Novais, a 33-year-old journalist and social media influencer who posts content about Carnival, sees in Torres a “modern, daring woman.”
On Sunday, Novais will party at the traditional Carnival in Olinda, in northeastern Brazil, wearing an Oscar statuette-inspired costume and celebrating Torres’ achievement.
“She shows that it’s possible to do culture, entertainment, politics, and history all at once — drawing laughs while informing,” Novais said. “I think Carnival is all of that, just like Fernanda.”
Maycron Abade and Thiago Mostazo contributed from Sao Paulo, Diarlei Rodrigues from Rio de Janeiro and Fernando Crispim from Manaus, Brazil.
