The Secret Agent
When a man calling himself Marcelo (Wagner Moura, TV's 'Narcos') pulls into a gas station in a bright yellow Volkswagon bug, he notes a body drawing flies from beneath a sheet of cardboard. The owner mentions that his night clerk caught the man stealing and shot him. But when the police arrive, they show no interest in that corpse, instead going over Marcelo and his car with a fine-toothed comb. It is 1977 in Brazil and Marcelo is being targeted by someone with ties to its military dictatorship in "The Secret Agent."
Laura's Review: A-
Writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho's ("Neighboring Sounds," "Bacurau") last film was "Pictures of Ghosts," a documentary about the old movie palaces of his home town, Recife, during his childhood in the 1970's. That appears to have been the catalyst for his latest, a film about shadowy forces during Brazil's military dictatorship that features its protagonist returning to Recife to see his child, Fernando (Enzo Nunes), a boy obsessed with the movie "Jaws" who is being watched after by his grandfather, Marcelo's late wife Fátima's (Alice Carvalho) father Alexandre (Carlos Francisco, "Bacurau"), a projectionist at one those old movie palaces from Filho's documentary.
The film is told in three separate chapters and jumps around, flashing forward to two women trying to reconstruct what happened to Marcelo via audio cassette tapes, and flashing back to Marcelo's past, where as a long-haired academic, he was confronted by a corrupt businessman, Ghirotti (Luciano Chirolli), who is now determined to disappear him, putting hit men and corrupt police officials on his trail. After threatening research grants at an academic meeting (sound familiar?), we'll see Ghirotti and his son dine out with Marcelo, who is actually Armando, and his wife, Fátima, who stands up to him in no uncertain terms. We never do learn what happened to her, as with so much else in this film, but can guess this was the catalyst for her death.
Earlier in the film (and getting back to that running "Jaws" theme), a forensic scientist will slit open a shark, from which a human leg will tumble, possibly one of the dictatorship's political opponents thrown from planes over the ocean. In the most surreal part of Filho's film, we will see that disembodied leg terrorize a park where gay men gather, the resulting press about 'The Hairy Leg' causing panic, another attempt at oppressing certain segments of society. Within this world is a brave subversive helping those in hiding and she comes in a surprising package. Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria, "Bacurau") is a petite elderly woman with a voice raspy from cigarettes, her eyes shaded with dark glasses, who finds Marcelo an apartment, a job at a government identity card office (where he will search for proof of his mother's existence and where one of Ghirotti's goons will send a chill through the back room by calling out 'Armando' from the service counter) and a community of fellow dissidents, one of whom, Cláudia (Hermila Guedes), will become Marcelo's lover. Another beautiful woman, Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido), will try to arrange a fake passport for Marcelo to get out of the country, his name now on a list being denied that privilege.
Filho, who describes his setting as 'a time of great mischief,' in an opening title scrawl, has stated that his film is about memory and that is reflected in the fractured recollections and various audio recordings reconstructing Armando's history. In the midst of a sprawling ensemble (which also includes the late Udo Kier as a Jewish barber whose facial scars tell his story), Moura grounds the film as a man trying to outrun evil forces while mostly standing in place. He will also play Fernando as an adult who tells one of the two women who's been trying to figure out what happened to his father that she knows more about Armando than he does. Fernando is now a doctor, working at a blood bank on the site where the cinema where he once saw "Jaws" used to stand.
Robin's Review: B-
The military junta that ruled Brazil lasted from 1964 and well into the 1980s. In 1977, Marcelo (Wagner Moura), an academic at odds with a superior, must flee to his place of birth in the north in Recife. His life is on the line and he has to stay hidden or die in “The Secret Agent.”
The title appears to be derived from a few seconds of the 60s British TV show of the same name, starring Patrick McGoohan, which is apropos to nothing. That said, director-writer Kleeber Mendonca Filho, who brought us the wonderful, nostalgic documentary, “Pictures of Ghosts (2023),” and creates a fictionalized account of the political turmoil in 1977 Brazil.
Marcelo is facing a vengeful superior who has, literally, the power of life and death. For the academic, it is definitely not life as two hit men are sent to dispatch him – permanently. This is where the main story – Marcelo saving himself – gets convoluted as a number of characters are introduced.
The fugitive from death is joined by a local, corrupt police chief, his two equally corrupt sons, a group of dissidents in hiding, the aforementioned hit men, the guy they subcontract to do the hit and, detached from the rest of the film, two researchers, in our present day, reading the transcripts of events. Confusing things more is Wagner Moura playing both father and son.
The “thriller” aspect with Marcelo on the lam is a good basis for his story. The plethora of characters and plot threads tends to confuse things more than resolve them. The acting is fine and the retro Recife is well-depicted. You get the sense of the oppression of the military junta on the average guy. Let us hope we do not face the same fate, here and now.
Neon releases "The Secret Agent" in theaters on 12/12/25.
