The Secret Agent
aka O Agente Secreto
First screened and reviewed in October 2025
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho. Cast: Wagner Moura, Robério Diógenes, Laura Lufési, Roney Villela, Gabriel Leone, Tania Maria, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Hermila Guedes, Luciano Chirolli, Alice Carvalho, Udo Kier. Screenplay: Kleber Mendonça Filho.

 In Brief:  Merits second look? Despite tense premise and usual Mendonça gifts, this felt sluggish and imperfectly integrated.

VOR: ⑤  Whatever my qualms about pace, look, and story management, Mendonça puts everything on the table. Bold in style, structure, social provocation.


   
Photo © 2025 CinemaScópio Produçøes / MK Productions /
ONE TWO Films / Lemming Films / NEON
Three major virtues of Kleber Mendonça Filho's film artistry all rematerialize: masterful shaping at the level of the scene, especially evident here in the opening and finish; novelistic richness in the expansive, long-arc storytelling; and an elasticity with genre, structure, and style that can be playful or enervating or both, depending on the moment.

I continue to appreciate all those gifts while having to admit that in The Secret Agent they didn't always meet each other in ways I found maximally or consistently involving, or that helped me through a complicated story that becomes a lot for the viewer (well, this viewer) to carry all the way to the finish. My first impression is that Mendonça does his best work here in scenes that are either narratively or emotionally pivotal or that you could fairly call frisky, furtive sidebars, from a comically frank seduction via typewriter to occasional check-ins with a pair of Angolan expats to a recurring thread about Jaws. But the median frequency where The Secret Agent unfolds a lot of its intricate story often felt strangely paced and a little overcrowded to me. I didn't personally respond to the photography and even less to the now-familiar Mendonça elements of 70s schlock horror and B-movie violence when they (inevitably?) roll around. Grade: B

Golden Globe Nominations:
Best Picture (Drama)
Best Actor (Drama): Wagner Moura
Best Non-English-Language Film

Other Awards:
Cannes Film Festival: Best Director; Best Actor (Moura); FIPRESCI Prize (Competition)
Chicago International Film Festival: Best Actor (Moura)
New York Film Critics Circle: Best Actor (Moura); Best International Film
Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Film Not in the English Language
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