NotesOnFilms Preview Edition: The Secret Agent (2025)

By Len Weiler

     Film Festival Alert:

The esteemed Mill Valley Film Festival  [www.mvff.com]is just around the corner running from 10/2 -10/12/2025 in Northern California. As usual it will feature many exciting and highly anticipated new films from the USA and around the world.  Some I’m looking forward to include Hamnet, a film adaptation of the recent novel about Mr and Mrs Wm Shakespeare; an adaptation of the B’way musical Kiss of the Spider Woman; two new features from the great Richard Linklater: Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague; and new films by Kelly Reichardt, Jafar Panahi, Edward Berger, Bradley Cooper, and many more, including the highly recommended new picture The Secret Agent, the subject of today's review. 

Across the country, the New York Film Festival  [filmlinc.org/nyff/ ] runs from 11/26 to 10/13/2025, which is also featuring The Secret Agent along with scores of other pictures.  (see below) 

It’s hard to adequately describe the new Brazilian film The Secret Agent without going into a lot of plot details, which I’m not going to do here. Simply stated it’s about life in a lawless, corrupt, unfair world and the fate of a man on the run. The easiest thing to do is to describe the film impressionistically, adjectivally. This is one terrific movie: engaging, artistically stylish, realistically detailed, superbly acted, compelling, and while somewhat meandering and occasionally silly, in the end it is a film that demands  and deserves  to be taken seriously, at once emotionally compelling and richly rewarding. It’s a picture you may want to see more than once. While largely set in mid-1970s Brazil, a time and place ruled by an autocratic, repressive regime aligned with and corrupted by its wealthy, oligarch supporters, this is, in fact, a cautionary film for our time. Some have called a it companion piece to last year’s I’m Still Here, which it sort of is, although its story, presentation  and the enveloping experience  of watching it are all far different. Like I’m Still Here, The Secret Agent is a memory piece, although on the surface it’s less obviously so. 

The picture is written and directed  by Brazilian auteur Kleber Mendonça Filho, whose most recent work includes the critically acclaimed movies  Aquarius (2016) and Bacurau (2019). Filho is a native of Recife, where much of The Secret Agent is set. 

It’s 1977 when we first meet Marcelo, the film’s compelling protagonist, driving his bright yellow VW bug along a lonely highway. He’s been on the road for days, traveling back to Recife (Brazil’s fourth most populous city) to reunite with his six-year-old son who’s been staying with his grandpa (Marcelo’s father-in-law).  When he pulls into a remote gas station – a place right out of any number of classic noir movies, except bathed in bright sunlight – he sees a dead body lying under a flattened cardboard box just a few yards from the gas pump.  Somewhat matter-of-factly, the station attendant tells the bemused Marcelo not to worry; the body has lain in the tropical heat there for days awaiting an ambulance, but the medicos seem to be too busy dealing with Carnaval craziness to bother. The scene is shocking and odd in equal measure, signifying nothing more nor less than that something is surely rotten in Brazil. 

The use of yellow, by the way, is prominent throughout the movie: not just cars, but clothing, walls and various other backgrounds - quite noticeable and rather nice. I do not know why – but I'll  suggest two thematic possibilities: (a) yellow is a prominent feature of the Brazilian flag (along with green (also used frequently in the film’s palette), and (b) yellow often has been used in traditional representational art to convey moral decay and corruption; in literature as well, I’m told, including in Conrad’s The Secret Agent (not in other respects a source for the storyline in this film). 

As it turns out, Marcelo (played brilliantly by Wagner Moura [Narcos (2015-16), Civil War (2024)] is a fugitive - for reasons the film will eventually explain - and has been given the address of a sort-of safe house in Recife, where he will stay with several other “refugees” while arrangements are made for him and his boy to leave the country. Marcelo/Moura, at the center of the narrative throughout its more than two hour run-time, is never less than magnetic. Marcelo is a pseudonym, we eventually learn, but one wonders if Moura chose that name because, in some indefinable way, the character reminds us of Mastroianni. 

There are some time shifts along the way: flashbacks to flesh out who this intelligent, mild-mannered character once was and flash-forwards to the near present to add context and gravity to what we are watching of 1977. There are also a bevy of interesting supporting characters – many of whom are real characters – good folks, bad folks and much in between, all very well played. 

The Secret Agent may be a movie that’s hard to summarize – it's so rich with detail, but it’s one that’s hard to get out of your head in the hours and days after you’ve experienced it.  At Cannes this past Spring, it won the awards for Best Actor (Moura) and Best Director (Filho) along with the FIPRESCI Prize from the International Federation of Film Critics. I expect  The Secret Agent to be a strong candidate for  glory in the upcoming winter awards season as well.  Highly recommended.

• At MVFF, The Secret Agent is scheduled for two screenings: in Mill Valley on October 3 and in San Rafael on October 5.  For times and ticket information  go to www.mvff.com/film/the-secret-agent .

• At NYFF, it is scheduled for three screenings. Go to filmlinc.org/nyff/ for more information. 

• General US availability of The Secret Agent: theatrical release date is said to be 11/26/2025

Grade:  A 158 minutes