I have been a fan of Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho right from the beginning since his impressive debut film, “Neighboring Sounds” from 2012, and have seen everything he has made after and loved them all. With each new film Mendonça Filho seems to grow in confidence in his storytelling abilities as the complexities within them also grow, and his latest film “The Secret Agent” is his most ambitious film yet. Such is my love of Mendonça Filho's cinema, “The Secret Agent” made it onto my most anticipated list of 2025, so I was very happy and relieved when I saw that it had made its way to MIFF. The only worry I had was that my session for “The Secret Agent” began at 9pm, on the second last day of the festival, with it being my fourth film of that day; was tiredness going to effect my enjoyment of the film, or make it hard to understand? Truthfully, I think some of the finer details within the film may have been lost to me due to my tiredness, but “The Secret Agent” is a truly stunning piece of cinema that I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish. It is smart, challenging and complex (without being complicated), and has what I think is the best performance by a male actor that I saw at MIFF this year.
The film takes place in 1977, which we are told at the beginning of the film was “a period of great mischief”. It is also a time when Brazil was under a military-dictatorship, corruption was everywhere and those people who dared to go against the regime, seemed to disappear overnight, never to be seen again. This is the backdrop to “The Secret Agent”, where we follow Marcelo, a former teacher on the run from the regime and the secret police intent on killing him, who is attempting to get a fake passport for himself and his son to escape Brazil before it is too late. His journey finds him in Recife, where his in-laws have been caring for his son, and where he is hidden in a safe-house with other “refugees” trying to escape the country. He is given a job at a place that makes identification cards for residents, which Marcelo searches through the records of in search of documentation to prove his mother existed, because he is sure the regime will soon destroy them all. However, time is running out quickly as his enemies are on his tail, and may be closer than Marcelo thinks.
Kleber Mendonça Filho tells his story with patience, allowing it to breathe and to give himself time to create fully rounded characters and a sense of time and place. Despite the time sensitive element of Marcelo's story, Mendonça Filho doesn't cut corners with his storytelling or with any of the details within it. As I mentioned earlier, “The Secret Agent” is complex but thanks to the way Mendonça Filho has laid out all of the information needed to tell the story, as long as the audience is paying attention, they should never find the movie confusing or complicated. I think the thing that through me the most was the title, and the fact that Marcelo is NOT a secret agent, but just a regular guy having to do clandestine acts, just so he can escape his country and live. The situation he is in, makes the film very tense at all times, because you know that any mistake, or trusting the wrong person could have devastating consequences to Marcelo and anyone he loves or who has helped him along the way. The opening scene at the gas station is such a great example, as it is such a suspenseful scene and yet nothing really happens, as Marcelo pays off the police interrogating him with a packet of cigarettes. The funny thing about this scene is that there is a dead guy with half his face missing, covered in newspaper lying about ten feet from them all, but the police aren't there for that, they are just trying to shake Marcelo down for some easy cash.
As serious as the story in “The Secret Agent” is, Mendonça Filho has a lot of fun within it, both in terms of cinematic style and the actual story itself. Very early on in the film, a severed leg is found inside the belly of a shark, scaring the students who were dissecting the animal in class. Recife is shark crazy as it is, due to the recent release of “Jaws”, so having a body part turn up in the stomach of one only adds to the hysteria, and sells more tickets to that hit movie. Amusingly, the severed leg goes missing from the morgue later in the film, and the mischievous press start to claim that there is a being known as “the hairy leg” going around killing people at night (although we know its the secret police doing the regime's dirty work). It is here that Mendonça Filho takes a wild swing with his film and does a scene of this severed leg, hopping around the cruising locations, kicking the shit out of these poor gay guys! It is such a funny, and unexpectedly scene, in a movie that is very serious, but it works. The leg is animated by, I think stop-motion, and the scene plays out like a bad horror film, but you have to give it to Mendonça Filho for being brave enough to try something so audacious as this. Cinematically, he also has fun using a lot of different camera techniques such as shooting scenes with a split-diopter lens or using split-screen to great effect. His absolute love for cinema is also shown by choosing a movie-house as the meeting place where Marcelo meets the people who will smuggle him out of the country for the first time. Interestingly, Mendonça Filho's previous film was the documentary “Pictures of Ghosts” which laments the fact that almost all the old movie-houses of the director's childhood, no longer exist in Recife anymore. It is a true love letter to cinema lost, and one of the great moments in “The Secret Agent” is that he gets to recreate one of these movie-houses from the documentary to be his key cinema for this film.
“The Secret Agent” is one of those films that is really hard to talk about because of all the twists and turns the story makes, as well as in the different ways Mendonça Filho decides to tell his story. I will not go into too much detail but just past halfway, the film veers away from being told in a linear form like everything that has come before it, and it soon becomes apparent that not everything is as it seems. That makes it sound a lot more mysterious than it really is, but Mendonça Filho makes a very brave decision in changing the telling of Marcelo's story. Initially, it threw me for a loop, but I really liked it by the end of the film. I also think that “The Secret Agent” may even work better on your second watch of the film, once you have worked out all the elements important to the story after your first viewing. It is a hell of a watch on this initial viewing, but it makes you want to go back for more, and watch it again. Another risk Mendonça Filho takes is by pulling a similar trick to the Coen Brothers and the way they ended their masterpiece “No Country For Old Men”, but again, his bravery pays off handsomely.
Did someone say “handsome”? “The Secret Agent” is one seriously good looking film. Shot in widescreen, it has been expertly lensed by cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova, giving Recife a bright sunny look to it all, despite all the darkness and corruption happening underneath. I particularly liked that the colour yellow was used extensively in the film, starting with Marcelo's VW Bug in the opening scene, before the colour red starts to make more appearances towards the end. In regards to the violence in “The Secret Agent” it is few and far between, but when these scenes take place, it is very graphic. Mendonça Filho handles the sex scenes in the film in the exact same way too, in that there isn't many of them, but he never shy's away from the details when they do take place.
I really need to talk about the acting in “The Secret Agent” which is just superb; not one person lets the film down. Everyone is so believable, particularly living in a time of such heaviness and danger, you can feel how on edge everyone is, and how reticent they are to trust anyone, but are trying to make the best out of a bad situation. Special mention must be made for Tânia Maria who plays Dona Sebastiana, the old woman who sets Marcelo up with the apartment, cash, and contacts for a job. She is so lively in the role and is just wonderful (oh, and you have to check out her “two-faced” cat!), and I must mention Udo Kier, who is only in the film very briefly for what is essentially an extended cameo but who is heartbreakingly good in the role. As I mentioned, everyone is great in the film, but this is definitely Wagner Moura's film, as he is beyond sensational as Marcelo. His portrayal of this man on the run is both sensitive and melancholic, as you can see the sadness behind his eyes of his world that now does not exist, and you can see how caring he is as a father to Fernando. Moura gives Marcelo a sense of determination to succeed in escaping Brazil, even if it means doing things that are dangerous, but he never makes him out to be more than just a common man. It is such a wonderful performance, that I know I am not doing it justice, by these few brief words, but it was definitely the best performance I saw by a male actor at MIFF this year. I briefly want to mention that an actor, who will remain unnamed, also has a surprise double-role in “The Secret Agent”, showing up as a different character at the end, but being just as brilliant in the role, while a lot different to their other character, even though there is an echo of that character in the performance (I know that is all very vague, but it is end of the movie, so should remain a secret, and hopefully makes some sense after you have seen the film.)
Overall, Kleber Mendonça Filho's “The Secret Agent” is such a fantastic political thriller, that is smart, complex, and a whole lot of fun. I feel like I have barely scratched the surface in regards to the film, as there is so much to take in and talk about in this wonderful film. It has been superbly shot making the film visually exciting at all times, packed full of suspense and tension and the entire cast perform their roles to perfection with Wagner Moura being an absolute standout. This is exciting cinema, and another excellent film from a brilliant director, who in the future I am sure will be talked about as one of the all-time greats.
4 Stars.
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