Kleber Mendonca Filho’s The Secret Agent, which is about an academic on the run during Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship, won two Golden Globes, and has been nominated for four Oscars, and it’s truly special even if it is languorous and sprawling. It is one of those long films (two hours and 40 minutes) populated by so many characters you may well find yourself praying: ‘Please let me keep track of who’s who.’ Do hang on in there. It will all come right and be so worth it.
The house is run by Dona Sebastiana, who may now be my favourite film character ever
The film is set in 1977 which, an intertitle tells us, with some understatement, was a period of ‘great mischief’. It has an opening scene that will likely become iconic as it’s so brilliantly tense. We see a yellow VW Beetle and its driver, Marcelo (Wagner Mouro), pulling into a rural, dusty gas station. A corpse is lying on the forecourt, having been shot. It’s been there for days. No one cares. The police turn up and they don’t care. The police start to interrogate Marcelo about his car – You have your licence? Would you say this tyre was bald? – as they work their way up to demanding a bribe. This is slow, drawn out and, somehow, so fraught that you are holding your breath. This Brazil is colourful, vibrant, vivid but underneath? Danger everywhere.
Marcelo is heading to a safe house for dissidents in his hometown, Recife. The house is run by Dona Sebastiana, who may now be my favourite film character ever. She’s a 77-year-old, bird-like, chain-smoking ‘communist-anarchist’ who is so gloriously alive it makes you wish all older women could be portrayed on screen in this way. She is played by Tania Maria, who is sensational. (Unbelievably, it’s her first acting role. She is otherwise a seamstress whom Filho spotted when making a previous film in her hometown.) Anyway, Marcelo is awarded an apartment which also houses a two-faced cat. The cat isn’t bitchy. It really does have two faces. The cat is called Liza and also Elis. But if weirdness isn’t your thing it does stop there. Apart from ‘the hairy leg’, but we’ll get to that.
The Secret Agent is essentially a political thriller with the main narrative propulsion coming from wanting to know why Marcelo is on the run, but it’s so much else besides. There are hitmen and a hitman hired by the hitmen. There’s an evil businessman/politician. There is Marcelo’s search for his own mother, his romance with a neighbour and his relationship with his young son. There’s the corrupt chief of police. There’s the harassment of a German Jew. And, in the present day, we have two university students transcribing tapes of interviews Marcelo gave to the resistance. It sounds a lot because it is a lot, yet I did manage to keep track of who’s who, amazingly. As for ‘the hairy leg’, it’s a human one found inside a dead shark that later comes to life and kicks gay people. A bit of a head-scratcher, plus it rather took me out of the film, but from what I now understand it’s a metaphor for the violence meted out by the dictatorship, especially to minorities, as based on an urban legend. Brazilians will get it, I was told.
Elsewhere, it doesn’t put a foot wrong. The 1970s are brilliantly captured (the cars!) and there isn’t a bum note when it comes to performances. Mouro, who has been nominated in the Best Actor category, is entirely commanding even though Marcelo is a quiet, self-contained man who doesn’t say much more than necessary. It adds up to a film about ordinary people living with oppressive political realities and, from what I understood of the ending, a country that would rather not remember. The other nominations, by the way, are for Best Picture, Best International Feature Film and also Best Casting. That’s for Tania Maria, I’m sure.
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