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An Absorbing Investigation of a Time of Mischief

The contextual title card at the beginning of The Secret Agent characterizes 1977 Brazil as a time of ‘mischief’. A mild word perhaps to use for a military dictatorship that monitored everyday lives and disappeared people without trial or explanation. A film like last year’s I’m Still Here -set about the same time- demonstrated that viscerally. But in the way that Kleber Mendoça Filho illustrates the authorities standing in for that regime on a micro level, it does appear to be the appropriate term. This is a movie that begins with officers elaborately investigating a car at a gas station, getting in it and looking through every nook and cranny, but are uninterested in the dead body lying a few feet away, a victim of gun violence earlier in the week, waiting to be disposed of. It is important to emphasize that the adherents to that system weren’t merely vile, but petty, corrupt, and idiotic.
Mendoça Filho touched on that theme before through the villains of Bacurau, his wild revisionist western on the effects of American colonialism on a Brazilian rural village. He’s a filmmaker who loves his retro movie aesthetics, as he shoots and stylizes The Secret Agent in the manner of 70s thrillers, with similar film grain and colour schemes, devices like crash-zooms and De Palma’s split-screens, and both the movie Jaws and allusions to real shark attacks play a significant role in the narrative. The retro appeal though isn’t just for its own sake and in keeping the film’s action engaging, it is a lens through which Mendoça Filho can look at the past of his country and his own home-town of Recife and interpret them through a critical time.
The film stars Wagner Moura, returning to Brazil after several years in Hollywood, as Armando, a political dissident of the regime concealing his identity and attempting to keep a low profile until he and his son (whose mother has died) can flee the country. He returns to Recife on the northeastern coast, sheltering in a safe house with other refugees whilst visiting his father-in-law, who has been raising his son, and working at a social registration archive  where he whiles away time looking for a record on his mother, whose origin is a mystery to him. Meanwhile in São Paulo, a former corporate supervisor with a grudge against Armando issues a hit on him around the same time a mystery confounds local police of a disembodied leg found in the body of a tiger shark.
When Brazil is most often represented to the world on cinema by one of its biggest cities -Rio, São Paulo, or Brasília- Mendoça Filho showcases Recife with both a sense of personal nostalgia (he was about the same age as Armando’s son Fernando) and an interest in the city as a character itself, defined by its coastal proximity and port of both refuge or escape for those fleeing to or out of Brazil. We see this reflected in the people around Armando -an Angolan couple evading civil war staying in the same safe house, or a Holocaust survivor, played by the late Udo Kier in his final movie role, often mistaken due to his German heritage (and to his justified anger) for a Nazi in hiding. Recife is depicted in this sense as a transitory place, despite Mendoça Filho’s connection to it -and yet there is sentiment to it, some of its warm spaces and comforts. The movie house that Armando’s father-in-law runs clearly has some emotional significance.
It is a good backdrop in any case for the intrigue, the hunt for Armando and his own principles and priorities that he must attend to. An exceptional showcase for Moura, who has to play this character under different identities, assumed attitudes, and a constant sense of caution. But any anxiety this inspires is kept subtle, Moura doesn’t emphasize any usual tricks -a confident and intelligent character who has a good sense of who he can trust. All the while he appears to make efforts to settle his affairs, reconnecting with his father-in-law Alexandre (Carlos Francisco), and giving an interview to the resistance movement detailing his relationship to that powerful Eletrobras boss, a distinctly petty figure, in which he (along with his late formidable wife) demonstrates an admirable degree of conviction and courage in defiance. It also makes for a good illustration of how the effects of the military regime are felt even outside the direct parameters of the government. Moura and Mendoça Filho articulate well that sense of claustrophobia, borrowing again from classics of the political thriller genre. There are compositions and camera angles at a few junctures that suggest Armando is being watched when he isn’t -an atmosphere of paranoia with implications for Armando that even he doesn’t seem to be aware of.
Apart from its style, Mendoça Filho keeps the film grounded for the most part, though he does throw in a few strains of the bizarre or outrageous akin to those wilder sequences in Bacurau. His visualization of the absurd story about that dismembered leg put forward as a cover-up is the most extravagant. But there is also a touch of that sensibility in the political conversations brimming with seething critique, and some of the eccentric side characters, such as the gas station attendant or a would-be assassin, weird personalities Mendoça Filho clearly enjoys showcasing. The film’s tone is shockingly versatile in accommodating such elements while staying true to its considered political and personal integrity and its thrilling sense of tension.
That is a crucial component of the film that Mendoça Filho never loses sight of, as he steadily builds towards a moment of confrontation between Armando and the goons hired to take him out -goons who of course have a very cordial relationship with the corrupt local police force in Recife. The culmination is a terrific action climax, an ardently paced and intriguing sequence of chaos, perfectly true to the form Mendoça Filho is evoking.
A lot of the movie reads intentionally as biographical, especially once the second act reveals a framing device of a modern university student researching the events of this story as part of a wider study of the resistance movement around Recife at that time. Mendoça Filho uses this context rather tactfully, as its own point of suspense -the girl Flavia (Laura Lufési) learning the fate of Armando at the same pace as we do, her own investment a mirror to ours. It also functions to distinguish the place in history the narrative proper is set against next to a freer present day. And it is an especially interesting choice to leave the thematic resolution to this region of the movie, Armando’s legacy and influence ascertained with greater complexity in his absence. Though in a shrewd and compelling way, Moura is still permitted to be involved, further showcasing his performance versatility.
Shot on film with old camera equipment to capture a 1970s glean, the effect is certainly successfully visually captivating. Those tangible film qualities in presentation really make a difference. The Secret Agent lives up to the kind of work it seeks to emulate while rising a touch above in some respects. While it is thrilling and engaging, it is also a potent illustration of a time and place, the juxtaposition of an oppressive political atmosphere and a space of warm nostalgia. There is a viciousness that Mendoça Filho can’t shy away from but a sense of sincerity arises here too, in the attitude, principles and determination that Moura is a great avatar for. It marks the critical soul of one of the most transporting, intoxicating movies of the year.

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