Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonca Filho is no stranger to Cannes, having previously debuted two previous films in competition beginning with Aquarius in 2016 starring Sonia Braga so effective as a woman determined not to lose her condo to a demolition, and then grabbing the Jury Prize in 2019 for the surreal western, Bacurau (again with Braga) in which a whole village is seemingly disappeared from satellite maps and must fight for its existence. Both those movies deal thematically with people threatened with losing their way of life, being displaced. Now his third film in competition, his biggest production yet, The Secret Agent might also fit into that theme (and no it is not some ripoff of James Bond) as it centers on a man coming back to a small city in order to get closer to his young son after losing his wife to pnemonia. What he discovers in the period film set in Recife in 1977 is a town under siege at Carnaval time by criminal elements in the country which is being run by a dictatorship and losing the chance for a better life under the ruling class.
Unlike the 1970-set Walter Salles film, I’m Still Here which won the Best International Film Oscar in March and was explicitly about being disappeared under the harsh military torture tactics, this film is really in the thriller mode and more explicitly focuses on the individual story of Marcel (Wagner Maura), a somewhat mysterious tech guy who drives back to Recife looking for a change and second chance at life but immediately finds some strange vibes at the gas station just outside of town where a dead body lies there covered by a blanket and abandoned. He is confronted by two military types who put him through the ringer with questions and checking out his car. He just wants to continue on and gets his first taste of the new corruption there by paying them off to stop the makeshift “interrogation”.
Once he gets back on somewhat familiar ground he finds a familiar face at the building where his son lives, the wise owner Tereza Victoria who immediately tries to set him up with the upstairs neighbor, Claudia (Aerrula Guedes). He also engages with his boy who is more interested in drawings he is creating of the shark from Jaws, a movie Marcel is determined not to let his son see at the local cinema where grandpa runs the projector and seems more willing to show the kid the Spielberg classic (this interaction will all be paid off at film’s end when the action flash forwards to 2025).
Meanwhile at his new job at a firm dealing with identity cards and research the locals are curious about his single or married status, while newspapers run the story of a man’s leg being discovered in a great white shark which was washed up and now made its way to a lab for a police investigation. Eventually the “hairy leg” story takes on a life of its own, with even a fantasy sequence in which it attacks men engaging in sexual activity in a gay park, something meant as a metaphor for the secret police and authorities cracking down.
There is a complicated path with many shady characters being weaved in and out, a body count nearing 100 unexplained deaths at Carnaval, and a extremist rival of Marcel’s from his University days determined to oust smart colleagues by hiring a pair of daunting hit men who we first meet dumping one of their “hits” off a bridge, and now hired to track down Marcel and “shoot him in the mouth”. They are also connected to that mystery leg to boot. And here is where we learn Marcel may not be Marcel at all, but rather Armando. Hmmmm. In one of the best sequences, certainly the most violent, the hit men hire another hit man to actually do the deed putting Marcel/Armando in real danger in a town where he is getting a lot more than he bargained for.
Maura (Elite Squad, Narcos, Dope Thief) plays the unsuspecting “newbie” in town with conviction and slow reveal that he is hiding more than he lets on. The very large supporting cast including Filha regular Udo Kier fill in all the blanks in this overlong – at 158 minutes – sometimes rambling scenario that Filha has nevertheless managed to infuse with style and wide screen excitement. It also has a key subplot set a half century later with two women transcribing audio cassette tapes from the archive, one of them a taped conversation with Armando which holds great fascination and curiosity for one of the women, Flavia (Laura Lufesi) and could be a key to unlocking all the mystery.
Producer is Emilie Lesclaux.
Title: The Secret Agent
Festival: Cannes – In Competition
Sales Agent: MK2
Director/Screenplay: Kleber Mendonca Filho
Cast: Wagner Maura, Maria Fernanda Candido, Carlos Francesco, Alice Carvalho, Aermila Gueded, Isabel Zuaa, Udo Kier, Laura Lufesi, Rokey Villela, Italo Martins, Roberto Diogenis
Running Time: 2 hours and 38 minutes
