A Tale of Two Fernandas: “Central Station”

When, at this year’s Golden Globes ceremony, Fernanda Torres was called to the stage, I was surprised. She had just won the statuette for “best performance by a female actor in a motion picture—drama,” the cumbersome title for a category that included such big names as Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton, and Angelina Jolie. Torres’ film, the Brazilian I’m Still Here, meant nothing to me back then. But I began paying attention when Torres followed up her Golden Globes win with an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for the same film (Mikey Madison ultimately took the prize for Anora), and when I learned more about her.

  It’s always been rare for actors to nab Oscar nominations (let alone wins) for films made in foreign languages. In 1960 Sophia Loren won her Oscar for the Italian-language Two Women, making her the first lead performer to ever be honored by the Academy for a foreign language role. But Torres’ nomination was by no means a first for Brazil nor for Latin America as a whole. Back in 1999, her own mother, also named Fernanda, was Oscar-nominated as Best Actress for Central do Brasil (also known as Central Station). Fernanda Montenegro, the mother of Fernanda Torres as well as film director Claudio Torres, is considered one of Brazil’s cultural treasures. Now 95, she is still active, and even played her daughter’s character—now at an advanced age—at the tail-end of I’m Still Here.

 But Central Station (directed by Walter Salles, who would later helm I’m Still Here) remains Fernanda Montenegro’s greatest international triumph. Since I’ve now seen—and very much admired—I’m Still Here, I was curious indeed to watch a film that shows Montenegro in all her glory. It’s hardly a glamour role, and she was almost 70 at the time, though I would have pegged her for a somewhat younger woman. The film begins in Rio de Janeiro’s central railway station, where someone named Dora has set up a table to serve passersby. She’s a retired teacher, and in a country where illiteracy is rampant she offers her services writing letters for a modest fee. That’s how the story begins: we see vivid close-ups of locals dictating the letters they want to send—angry letters, love letters, plaintive missives to Jesus. For a small extra charge, she’ll promise to post your letter too. What the customers don’t know is that, after she briskly leaves the station, she’ll head for her modest flat and stuff the unsent letters into a drawer. Or even tear them up.

 But her encounter with one customer unexpectedly changes everything. The woman shows up at Dora’s table with her young son, who’s desperate to meet the father he’s never known. The woman herself seems to have mixed emotions about her former spouse, who’s apparently a drunk, though she ultimately admits she misses him. I won’t go into the circumstances that put Dora herself suddenly in charge of the boy’s future, but the film evolves into the duo’s long and complicated journey to a remote northern Brazilian town. This is ultimately one of those films, like for instance Claude Berri’s The Two of Us, in which a crusty oldster evolves into a kindly protector for a needy child. The growing bond between the cantankerous woman and the street-smart kid (young Vinícius de Oliveira was an airport shoeshine boy before landing this, his film debut) is convincing, and the big nightime scene in which they lose one another in the midst of a smalltown religious festival is a small cinematic masterpiece, leading up to a deeply poignant ending.