London Film Festival Review: The Secret Agent – “defies easy classification.”

As with most of Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s films, The Secret Agent defies easy classification. Even its relatively simple conspiracy thriller title is a red herring.

It takes place in Brazil in 1977 during the country’s military dictatorship, which he wryly describes in a caption as “a time of great mischief”. That brutal period lasted from 1964 to 1985.

But unlike Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, which was a much more straightforward study of the era – The Secret Agent shares more of the genre-hopping DNA of Mendonça Filho’s 2019 film Bacurau.

Like that film, it’s a slow burn, establishing the backdrop and the story’s major players before getting more action-heavy later. After being stopped by two policemen at a petrol station while flies buzz around an unidentified corpse – Marcelo (Wagner Moura, on terrific form), drives from rural São Luís, northeast hinterland to Recife.

On the run, trying to get out of Brazil and grieving the death of his wife Fátima, Marcelo (real name Armando), has a reunion with his son, Fernando. The boy believes his mother died of illness. Later on, it’s clear that’s a story Marcelo’s told him to try and spare the kid more trauma and potentially danger. The kid is being raised by his grandfather, Sr. Alexandre (Carlos Francisco), the gentle projectionist at the Boa Vista cinema, which will later become a place of resistance as well as respite from the dictatorship.

But first, Marcelo has to hole up in an actual safehouse, run by Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), an indomitable older woman with her own political past. She gives Marcelo a place to stay, a cover job and refuge among other dissidents, including Angolan refugees Tereza Vitória and her husband. There is a reluctant trust among the residents, but Marcelo manages to find diversions in sex, music and drinking while he’s there.

Then there’s the business of staying undercover until he can get out of the country. Former university tech researcher Marcelo doesn’t initially know why he’s the target of a hit by two hired goons rather than hauled into an interrogation cell by the regime. It’s unveiled later on. While working undercover, he trawls the archives for traces of his late mother. Later on, researchers in the present day listen back to recorded calls between Marcelo and the leader of a resistance group called Elza, who may be the secret agent.

Like all his films, Mendonça Filho deftly weaves Brazil’s colonial history and social commentary with his deep love of genre cinema. He also zooms in on the nuances of the socio-economic divide that exists between the northeast and the south. One scene in a restaurant captures that perfectly while explaining how Marcelo and his wife became targets. A simple doodle on a napkin speaks volumes.

But it’s not all about the dense and layered plot. From visual nods to westerns and 70s spy thrillers, Mendonça Filho enjoys wrong-footing his audience. Quite literally this time, with a B-movie-ish subplot involving a leg found in a shark’s stomach that reanimates and goes on a homophobic kicking/killing spree. But as the images of whirring printing presses suggest, this isn’t just an absurdist diversion. The urban legend of “The Hairy Leg” was an urban myth in Recife invented by a journalist to report on groups under attack by the regime.

Cultural touchpoints of the era shine through too, from brightly coloured VW Beetles and the booming hedonism and exquisite sounds of carnival, to the filmmaker’s beloved Recife cinemas as explored in his 2024 documentary Pictures of Ghosts. The Secret Agent isn’t just a political thriller. It’s about a country where the present is in constant dialogue with its past. And why the freedom to critique the country you love is so important.