Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonca Filho is no stranger to Cannes, having debuted two previous films in Competition beginning with Aquarius in 2016 starring Sonia Braga, so effective as a woman determined not to lose her condo to a demolition, and then grabbing the Jury Prize in 2019 for the surreal western Bacurau (again with Braga), in which a whole village seemingly is disappeared from satellite maps and must fight for its existence. Both of those movies deal thematically with people threatened with losing their way of life, being displaced.

Now his third film in Competition and biggest production yet, The Secret Agent, also might fit into that theme (and no, it is not some James Bond ripoff) as it centers on a man coming back to a small city in order to get closer to his young son after losing his wife to pneumonia. What he discovers in the film set in 1977 Recife is a town under siege at Carnival time by criminal elements in the country, which is being run by a dictatorship and losing the chance for a better life under the ruling class.

Unlike the 1970-set Walter Salles film I’m Still Here, which won the Best International Film Oscar in March and is explicitly about being disappeared under the harsh military torture tactics, this film is really in the thriller mode. It focuses more explicitly on the individual story of Marcel (Wagner Moura), a somewhat mysterious tech guy who drives back to Recife looking for a change and second chance at life but immediately finds some strange vibes at the gas station just outside of town, where a dead body lies there covered by a blanket and abandoned. He is confronted by two military types who put him through the ringer with questions and checking out his car. He just wants to continue on and gets his first taste of the new corruption there by paying them off to stop the makeshift “interrogation.”

Once he gets back on somewhat familiar ground, he finds a familiar face at the building where his son lives, the wise owner Tereza Victoria (a charming Isabél Zuaa), who immediately tries to set him up with the upstairs neighbor, Claudia (Hermila Guedes). He also engages with his boy, who is more interested in drawings he is creating of the shark from Jaws, a movie Marcel is determined not to let his son see at the local cinema where grandpa runs the projector and seems more willing to show the kid the Spielberg classic. This interaction will be paid off at film’s end, when the action flash-forwards to 2025.

Meanwhile, at his new job at a firm dealing with identity cards and research, the locals are curious about his single or married status, while newspapers run the story of a man’s leg being discovered inside a great white shark that washed up and now made its way to a lab for a police investigation. Eventually the “hairy leg” story takes on a life of its own, with even a fantasy sequence in which it attacks men engaging in sexual activity in a gay park, something meant as a metaphor for the secret police and authorities cracking down.

There is a complicated path with many shady characters being weaved in and out, a body count nearing 100 unexplained deaths at Carnival and a extremist rival of Marcel’s from his university days determined to oust smart colleagues by hiring a pair of daunting hitmen. We first meet them as they’re dumping one of their “hits” off a bridge, and now they’re hired to track down Marcel and “shoot him in the mouth.” They also are connected to that mystery leg to boot. And here is where we learn Marcel may not be Marcel at all but rather Armando. Hmmmm. In one of the best sequences, certainly the most violent, the hitmen hire another hit man to do the deed, putting Marcel/Armando in real danger in a town where he is getting a lot more than he bargained for.

Moura (Elite Squad, Narcos) plays the unsuspecting “newbie” in town with conviction and slow reveal that he is hiding more than he lets on. The very large supporting cast including Filha regular Udo Kier fill in all the blanks in this overlong — at 158 minutes — sometimes rambling scenario that Filha nevertheless has managed to infuse with style and widescreen excitement. It also has a key subplot set a half-century later with two women transcribing audiocassette tapes from the archive. One of them is a conversation with Armando, which holds great fascination and curiosity for one of the women, Flavia (Laura Lufési), and could be a key to unlocking all the mystery.

Producer is Emilie Lesclaux.

The Secret Agent
Cannes (Competition)
MK2
Kleber Mendonca Filho
Wagner Moura, Maria Fernanda Candido, Carlos Francesco, Alice Carvalho, Aermila Gueded, Isabel Zuaa, Udo Kier, Laura Lufesi, Rokey Villela, Italo Martins, Roberto Diogenis
2 hr 38 min