The Secret Agent (15)
Directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho
★★★★★

IF, LIKE this reviewer, you remember going to the movies to watch a story that would engross you for hours on end with complex yet respectful, intelligent narrative, one that would be mesmerisingly delivered by exceptional actors and exquisitely photographed by a virtuoso cameraperson (Evgenia Alexandrova in this case), then this film is for you.

Nominally a thriller, director Kleber Mendonca Filho, who also wrote the screenplay, uses “magic realism” to tell the story of Brazil in 1977 when, within the murderous military putschists of 1964, a moderate faction came into ascendancy under general Ernesto Geisel.

In the shadows the left remains a target as the system’s criminality lingers on, infecting the perilously slow restitution of democracy which will be debilitated again, and with a vengence, 40 years later by the arrival of the odious Jair Bolsonaro.

The lead protagonist, scientist Marcelo Alves (a pensive, Guevara-esque Wagner Moura), seeks refuge in a safe house in Recife run by a communist, Dona Sebastiana (a congenial Tania Maria). Close by, his son, Fernando Solimoes (a precocious Enzo Nunes), lives with his his maternal grandparents after the death of his mother.

It’s carnival time and Alves, who was hounded out of a job and saw his lab closed by a corrupt industrialist, is unaware that a hit on him has been contracted by said businessman (a sinister Alvaro Morte) whom Alves and his wife have publicly accused of corruption.

The hired killer will be Vilmar (an unsettling Kaiony Venancio), who is a terrifyingly uncomfortable invocation of the titular cangaceiro of Glaubert Rocha, Antonio das Mortes, killer of revolutionaries.

The narrative is delightfully intricate, linear but with many a fascinating twist and turn. Subtlety and nuance in all aspects are at the core of this fascinating movie.

Vignettes and surrealist humour are peppered throughout, “lightening” the mood. Among them the mysterious Jewish tailor Hans (a spectacular Udo Kier) who is locally believed to have been a Wermacht soldier … but was he?

The film’s bitter-sweet, poetic conclusion ponders the human devastation a dictatorship, fascist or otherwise, leaves in its wake. It also perhaps hints at a particularly poignant warning from Brecht: “The bitch that bore him [Hitler] is in heat again.”

It was, meritoriously, awarded Best Director, Best Actor (Wagner Moura) and Best Film (Fipresci) at Cannes 2025. Highly recommended. In fact, unmissable.

In cinemas February 20.