The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto) review
Cast: Wagner Moura, Maria Fernanda Candido, Gabriel Leone, Tânia Maria
Language: Portuguese with English subtitles
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Star rating: ★★★★.5
Some films like to get to the chase quite upfront. There is not a scene wasted. There is a storytelling intrigue that dictates the shots forward. Then there comes a film like The Secret Agent, from the mind of Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho. A film that begins with the breadcrumbs of intrigue—both political and personal —and then slows down. Sharp yet elusive, it is a story that is in no hurry to confront what lies ahead. We expect to see it one way or the other. Yet, this sense of inevitability gives the film a killer unpredictability.
The premise
We land in Brazil in 1977, introduced as “a time of great mischief.” A man's corpse is rotting away near a rural gas station where Wagner Moura's Armando pulls in his bright yellow VW Beetle. We know nothing of him in these opening shots, even as he moves into a temporary setup, hosted by a 77-year-old woman in Recife named Dona Sebastiana (a scene-stealing turn from Tânia Maria).
It turns out that he is a widowed former teacher whose son, Fernando, is now living with his grandfather. Armando is also awaiting instructions as he takes up a job at the identification office, where he searches for records that could link to his late mother. In the meantime, two hitmen are hired to kill Armando. But there is a lot more than meets the eye, as Armando will slowly know, as will we.
Confident and unpredictable
There is an astonishing level of confidence in the way Mendonça chooses to fill in the gaps of the story. The Secret Agent is a genre-shifting film marked by zigzagging subplots and eccentric stylistic flourishes. The more you try to grasp it, the more it eludes and teases you to follow. And so, you pay attention, you look closely, and fill in the details. It becomes Hitchcockian in its template of a thriller at times, while I was also reminded of the slickness that is so evident in Antonioni's works.
This is a film that captures a time marked by fear and uncertainty, but also the sheer ridiculousness of it all; the sweaty, worrisome exuberance in everyday acts of corruption. The hattip to Steven Spielberg's Jaws, and the manner in which the morbid context is embedded into the story, is darkly comic. Yet, The Secret Agent is also about how we remember the past and choose to define it. Midway through the story, the scene jumps to the present with Mendonça introducing two modern-day archivists. No matter what they hear and how they see the newspaper, the recorded history is like a scar, one that can only be remembered like a hallucination.
A captivating turn from Wagner Moura
Mendonça wants both the chaos and silence. Sometimes, these two elements clash in this languid and almost novelistic film, which is held together by the magnetic presence of Wagner Moura. His performance is wonderfully lived-in and intoxicating, drawing attention simply with the slightest shift in his expression.
The Secret Agent can be like a dare, a film of epic scale and ambition, a series of shifts and revelations. It can also feel like a bitter pill of truth, one that balances moments of shocking intensity, reminding us that history can never be encapsulated in a single, homogenous vessel. What an invigorating and transfixing film Mendonça has made, one that bears witness as well as records. It is a major achievement.
The Secret Agent played at the 31st Kolkata International Film Festival.