A love letter to cinema and Recife, Brazil, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s latest examines how we reconstruct the past through an intimate and pleasurable investigative thriller.
The Secret Agent managed to win two major prizes at Cannes this year, despite the official rules stating that “A single film can only receive one of the awards. However, the Award for Best Screenplay and the Jury Prize may be upon dispensation of the Festival, associated with an acting award”. The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto), a film in which cinematic aesthetic leans on genre and New Hollywood sensibilities, deservedly won the Best Director award for Kleber Mendonça Filho and Best Actor award for Wagner Moura. The Secret Agent’s vast scope charmed the Cannes audience this year, from its passionate letter to Filho’s hometown of Recife, Brazil to the genuinely pleasurable investigation of the title character, Marcelo, across three points in time.
Told in three parts, the film introduces us in 1977 to the enigmatic Marcelo (Wagner Moura), confronted by cops at a deserted gas station in an unwarranted search scene. Marcelo, doesn’t lose his cool, plays it straight and eases his way out of the scene by resentfully bribing the officer with cigarettes. Entering Recife in the midst of carnival, he meets Dona Sebastiana, the landlord of a refugee housing commune. Filho’s exposition lays out the details of the surroundings rather than Marcelo’s mysterious identity, leaving us to piece together the intricate puzzle. A police force led by head chief, Euclides (Robério Diógenes), and his team find a leg in a shark’s mouth, and Marcelo’s son Ferdinand, who lives with his maternal grandparents, is obsessed with drawing the posters of the 1975 movie, Jaws, while he awaits his father’s return. A cinematic parallel and an ongoing investigation sets forth the story about Marcelo’s background.
We learn that Marcelo is given a job at the Identification Institute where he searches for his mother’s identity, a motif that asks us and the characters for this constant yearning. Whether it be for the cinema, a person, or a place, it’s Filho’s bursting narrative that allows Marcelo this feeling to be felt. The film’s structure weaves us between the past and the present, where we see the plot eventually unravel. Marcelo has hit on him due to his past work as a public researcher for advancing and modernizing Recife against the privatization lead by the powerful, Henri. Marcelo, now realized as an ally of the working class, is awaiting his leave through fake passports for himself and his son, reluctantly forced to leave his home for a hopeful future.
Filho’s comprehensive script brings in all types of characters, expanding the investigative thriller themes to a more wholesome, richer world. Providing much needed screen time to the refugees gives a resonance towards the marginalized rather than just Marcelo, plotting out their hopes and dream. Or Hans (Udo Kier), who’s Jewish ancestry led him to Recife, post WWII, who becomes the butt end of the joke of the police through his scarred past, thus stating how one’s past will always be in the present. The Secret Agent’s characterization of its people through its details is one of the finest aspects on how Filho frames Marcelo, but also Recife.
Ultimately, The Secret Agent’s enters a last layer as we find out that what we are seeing and hearing are being listened to on cassette tapes sometime in the 2020s, where Flavia (Laura Lufési), a researcher is investigating the story of Marcelo, who was under protection, and real name is revealed to be Armando. A shift in perspective invites another element of cinematic parallel, where archiving and how the past recontextualizes the present. After the film’s centerpiece, or at least the climax of a shootout, Filho refuses to give into spectacle, but rather reflection and interpretation. He brings us back to the present, going full circle on cinema, memory, and reconstruction.
Our reporters are on the ground in Cannes, France, to bring you exclusive content from the 78th Cannes Film Festival—explore our coverage here.
