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PORTSIDE CULTURE

BRAZILIAN EPIC THE SECRET AGENT TACKLES POLITICS, ESPIONAGE, AND JAWS
 
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Natalie Keogan
September 12, 2025
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_ Kleber Mendonça Filho's fantastic thriller interweaves his
country's deep-seated corruption and his own love of cinema. _

, Photo: Neon

 

Even the housecat is two-faced in _The Secret Agent_, a culmination
of career-long fascinations for Brazilian writer-director Kleber
Mendonça Filho. Set in the northeastern Brazilian city of Recife
during a “period of great mischief” (i.e. carnival festivities)
circa 1977, the 158-minute epic follows Marcelo, the titular mystery
man (an almost distractingly sexy Wagner Moura), but isn’t simply
satisfied with unspooling a straightforward espionage story. Though
the plot slowly reveals the true identity and technically treasonous
background of Moura’s character, it also serves as an elaborate ode
to Mendonça’s hometown—as well as the now-defunct movie theaters,
and the cultural reverence once commanded by cinema, of the
filmmaker’s youth.

“It’s not easy to be called by another name,” says Dona
Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), an accommodating, charmingly acerbic
octogenarian. She’s Marcelo’s saving grace, hosting him at her
boarding house (complete with a feline whose head bears two profiles,
one named Liza and the other Elis) after his prolonged absence from
the city. Also residing under the woman’s roof are an assortment of
political fugitives, young runaways, and those who willingly
disappeared in order to evade domestic dangers. 

Hilariously, the elderly woman herself brazenly divulges her
boarders’ secrets to one another, though Marcelo is the first among
them to willingly reveal his Christian name and relevant personal
details. For one, he’s returned to reunite with his five-year-old
son Fernando (Enzo Nunes), who he hopes to flee with abroad as soon as
his fixer Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido) comes through with their
falsified documents. It is Elza who discreetly alerts Marcelo to the
fact that his high-profile enemy won’t let him go so easily; federal
official Ghirotti (Luciano Chirolli) has called upon ex-military
assassin Augusto (Roney Villela) and his chiseled stepson Bobbi
(Gabriel Leone) to take him out.

It will take four days for Elza to secure passports for Marcello and
his son, and the waiting game is expectedly uneasy. While tracking
Marcello down, however, Augusto and Bobbi have a concurrent matter to
attend to: After catching a massive shark, fishermen discover a
severed leg amid the beast’s entrails. This is clearly connected to
another clandestine killing that the pair orchestrated, so they
concoct a plan to make the evidence disappear, leading to the
unintentional creation of an absurd local legend in the process. 

The news has fully enraptured the public, who attend repertory
screenings of _Jaws_
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droves. Even Marcello’s son is obsessed with the cinematic parallel,
begging grandfather and film projectionist Alexandre (Carlos
Francisco) to let him see the movie at the theater. When Marcelo and
Alexandre interact with their progeny, Mendonça employs a
Spielbergian flourish that is steadily assured as opposed to simple
pastiche. Steven Spielberg is renowned for his keen knack for
portraying the sensitivities of children, and Mendonça evokes this
same sensibility by imbuing Fernando with an indelibly personal touch.
After all, Mendonça was the same age as the boy in 1977, and the
tandem terror and awe inspired by the mere sight of
the _Jaws_ poster is palpable.

The global sensation produced by this landmark blockbuster induced the
same emotional flurry among an entire generation; it’s easy, then,
to imagine why Mendonça opted for a reference point that would
immediately stir those from his generation (and countless others) to
reflect on the power that film had over them as an individual viewer
and as a collective audience. _The Secret Agent_‘s summer festival
run also happens to neatly coincide with the 50th anniversary
of _Jaws_, making it all the more ripe for juxtaposition. 

In order to recreate the reverence for cinemagoing that was once more
socially ingrained, Mendonça reconstructs the Recife of this era in
granular detail. Not only are the architectural intricacies,
interiors, and décor impeccably replicated, but the ensemble cast and
every background actor possesses a vintage visage. Not a single
“Instagram face” is ever in frame: naturally crooked teeth are
stained from chain-smoking; hair is requisitely shaggy; more vitally,
many are merely unassuming, but simultaneously striking in the same
way older relatives appear in weathered family photos. 

Fittingly, Elza lands Marcelo a gig at a civil registry office, where
he digs for his estranged mother’s portrait and personal records
among lengthy rows of hand-written files. Mendonça spent an extended
period of time sifting through the city’s vast archives, a process
he mined in his 2023 documentary _Pictures Of Ghosts_
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Mendonça withheld some of his most interesting insights from this
research for _The Secret Agent_. The trifurcated film’s final
chapter even unexpectedly shepherds us to contemporary Recife (the
setting for the majority of Mendonça’s films), where a dogged young
archivist mirrors Marcelo’s rebellious streak and directly interacts
with his legacy.

Dona Sebastiana makes a toast just before _The Secret
Agent _vacillates from past to present: She makes a pointed comment
about Fernando and similarly vulnerable children, who she hopes
“will grow up in a better Brazil.” On its face, this comment
isn’t entirely cynical. As police corruption and social
stratification continue to afflict the country, it’s hard to imagine
that necessary institutional change will solely occur by navigating
bureaucratic channels. Yet it’s also been over two years since
far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro was defeated, and he faced a 27-year
prison sentence
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his role in plotting a coup amid the film’s festival run.

Change is inevitable. Fashions go out of style, loved ones die, social
mores shift. A beloved movie house transforms into a new
enterprise. _The Secret Agent_ also changes, toggling between
effectively contrasted, period-accurate realities and playful
absurdism. By delicately weaving the veracity of archive, the reverie
induced by celluloid, and the inevitability of corruption into its
narrative, _The Secret Agent _becomes a career-spanning treatise
that cozily situates itself amid the staggering cinematic epics that
Mendonça pays respect to. 

DIRECTOR: Kleber Mendonça Filho
WRITER: Kleber Mendonça Filho
STARRING: Wagner Moura, Alice Carvalho, Gabriel Leone, Maria Fernanda
Cândido, Isabél Zuaa, Udo Kier
RELEASE DATE: September 7, 2025 (TIFF)

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* Brazil
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* Corruption in politics
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