The Secret Agent

Threat feels ever-present in The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s sprawling, dexterous and enthralling slow-burn thriller. Films are often labelled as ‘novelistic’, but this one truly earns the descriptor in its richly detailed and ranging portrait of Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco in eastern Brazil, during the country's military dictatorship. Set in 1977, about halfway through the regime’s tenure, it follows Marcelo (played wonderfully by Wagner Moura), who arrives in the city while attempting to avoid the iron hand of an unwelcoming administration. Moura has made history by becoming the first Brazilian to be nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars, and his exceptional turn anchors a film that has also bagged nominations for Best Picture and Best International Feature Film.

Marcelo is not the character’s real name. He has arrived in Recife under an alias. He's actually Armando, an academic on the run from a powerful politician and businessman, and he's still mourning the loss of his wife, Fatima (played in flashback by Alice Carvalho). ‘Marcelo’ is put up in a commune run by the steely Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria) and provided with a job in a local records bureau, where he is surreptitiously trying to locate extant proof that his mother ever existed while also arranging to spirit his young son, Fernando (Enzo Nunes), away from Brazil.

Fatima’s tragic death is just one of many injustices meted out by those in charge, and Mendonça Filho’s screenplay adroitly weaves in a whole host of stories and asides that form an elaborate and evocative tapestry of Brazilian society at the time. While such a range of narrative threads might serve to diffuse The Secret Agent's genre and tone, in fact, these varied stories forge their own cumulative, gripping force.

One such subplot involves a dismembered leg that is found in the stomach of a shark early in the film, only to go missing from the morgue, sparking rumours that it is loping around the city at night, preying on unsuspecting lovers in the local park. Here, the paranoia is clearly flavoured by Spielberg’s Jaws, which comes up several times with Fernando itching to see it, while the cinema that Marcelo’s father-in-law works in is showing The Omen to fainting cinemagoers. One scene even presents a low-rent monster-movie-style attack by the hopping appendage.

In reality, the leg wound up in the shark courtesy of the police, led by Chief Euclides (Robério Diógenes), who are using Carnival as cover for offing more than a hundred undesirables. Meanwhile, there is a mysterious activist, Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido), who arranges for Marcelo’s fake identity, and three hitmen (Roney Villela, Gabriel Leone and Kaiony Venâncio) are in town and on the hunt.

There is a lot going on across The Secret Agent’s 161-minute runtime, which at once means it never lags and characters and stories never overwhelm or lose their individual flavour and impact. Mendonça Filho balances them all perfectly to tell both Marcelo’s story and the stories of so many others whose lives were shaped and shattered by the regime.

 

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The Secret Agent is released 20 Feb by MUBI