Like 2020’s Bacurau, which Kleber Mendonca Filho co-directed with Juliano Dornelles, Filho’s The Secret Agent kept me at a bit of a distance, given my lack of context when it comes to recent Brazilian history. Set mostly in 1977, the movie follows Marcelo (Wagner Moura), an academic who has run afoul of nefarious business and political types—not exactly what you want when the country was being governed by an oppressive, corrupt regime. A riveting opening set piece involving a rural gas station and a mysterious corpse captures the precariousness of this time and place, but the particulars of Marcelo’s predicament remain elusive and oblique, especially as both plot and cast continue to expand (even making room for an absurdly comic sequence about a sentient dismembered leg). Still, Moura captivates as the quietly seething central figure, while Filho’s use of saturated colors and lively diegetic music make The Secret Agent a sumptuously unsettling experience.
(1/5/2026)
