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 in 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. 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 for 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)
