Review: The Secret Agent

Image courtesy of MUBI.

Kleber Mendonca Filho's "The Secret Agent" might be set during an actual historical period - 1977 in Brazil, about halfway through the country's military dictatorship - but it marches to the beat of its own drum from the opening scene. The film may be a period piece during a fraught moment in that country's history - much like last year's very good "I'm Still Here" - but its surreal touches and offbeat narrative turns give it a mysterious, dreamlike quality.

For example, the film opens with Armando (Wagner Moura) - who is going by the alias Marcelo - pulling into a deserted gas station in Recife, located in Brazil's state capital of Pernambuco, in a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle. He spots a dead body just barely covered in newspaper on the gas station's grounds. The station's owner tells him that the body belonged to a man who was shot trying to rob the station and that it has been lying there for days. The police pull up to the station - but rather than investigate the body, which seems not to interest them at all, they search Armando's car and ask for his papers. 

The entirety of Mendonca Filho's offbeat crime drama has scenes like this that take place in the real world but with a sense of absurdity and peculiarity. We won't know until much later in the film why Armando has come to Recife or why he appears to be living on the down low at a boarding house run by a quirky, tiny older woman named Dona Sebastiana (Tania Maria). It's also unclear why a pair of hitmen appear to be on his trail.

Violence is everywhere and often comes unexpectedly, from the body at the gas station to the two aforementioned hit men disposing of a body by tossing it off a bridge. The public seems to be obsessed with "Jaws," which is apparently screening all over town, and with an actual shark-related incident in which a human leg was found in the stomach of one, leading to a grim and graphic autopsy. Later, a shootout outside a police station results in a gory aftermath.

Meanwhile, Armando appears to be taking great risks as he checks in on his young son, Fernando (Enzio Nunes), who is living with his maternal grandfather, Alexandre (Carlos Francisco), who runs one of the movie theaters showing "Jaws." There's also a particularly amusing - and wholly bizarre - series of scenes revolving around audiences' wild reactions to "The Omen," which is also screening there.

Each character in the film seems interesting enough to have their own movie, from Dona Sebastiana, who regales her tenants with stories, to a single mother named Claudia (Hermila Guedes). There is the pair of hitmen, who give off a father-son vibe (although we later learn of their actual relationship) and another man (Kaiony Venancio) hired to pull off an assassination who chews up every scene he's in. 

There's also a corrupt police chief (Roberio Diogenes), a young woman (Laura Lufesi) set in the present time who is listening to recordings from that era for purposes we won't discover until the end, and a former World War II soldier (the late Udo Kier) who is prompted by the police chief in one of the film's strangest scenes to show everyone his war scars.

This is a film that is bursting with memorable characters, shocking outbreaks of violence, surreal touches that one might expect in a Luis Bunuel film, political unrest, and a surprising ending that makes all that has gone on before to be quite moving. And I haven't even touched on the disagreement between Armando and his wife (Alice Carvalho) with a corrupt businessman that set everything in motion - or the disembodied leg that walks around the city at night, randomly kicking strangers (you have to see this to believe it).

Mendonca Filho's previous films - especially "Neighbouring Sounds" and "Bacurau" - also incorporate an offbeat, and occasionally shockingly violent, tone that utilizes surreal imagery, but "The Secret Agent" is his most successful blending of these tones and moods to date. It's one of the year's best and includes one of its finest performances - Moura as the mysterious Armando - although the entire cast's work will likely stick in your mind long after it's over. 

This is not a movie with easy answers or explanations - but it's a fascinating look at the attempt to survive under a brutal dictatorship that rarely goes places you'll expect it to go. It's also a powerful story about the importance of archiving the past and the attempts to fill in the gaps of history. What a strange and unique picture.