Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Starring: Wagner Moura, Carlos Francisco, Tânia Maria, Robério Diógenes, Alice Carvalho, Gabriel Leone, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Hermila Guedes, Isabél Zuaa, Udo Kier
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 161 mins

The Secret Agent is a historical political thriller directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho that’s received quite the buzz at this year’s Academy Awards, including a Best Picture nomination. The film stars Wagner Moura as a man we’re first introduced to as Marcelo Alves, who’s travelling to Recife (which happens to be the director’s hometown) in his yellow Volkswagen Beetle to seek refuge during the 1977 Carnival – during the political turmoil of the Brazilian military dictatorship. Slowly but surely, The Secret Agent reveals its hand as to who Moura’s character really is and why he’s ended up in this tension-fuelled city. It’s interesting that this is the second film in the space of a year to explore the same point in history, with Walter Salles’s hypnotic I’m Still Here landing a Best Picture nomination just last year.

Although ramshackle in its construction, The Secret Agent is a powerful film with an outstanding central performance from Wagner Moura. It’s particularly period-appropriate in its sun-dried setting and rich characters from the warm refugees Marcelo shares a block of flats with (run by Dona Sebastiana, in an endlessly charismatic performance by Tânia Maria). From the gripping opening scene, human life is treated as expendable as Marcelo fills his car up at a petrol station where a fly-encrusted corpse is rotting in the corner, and when the police turn up, they’re more interested in finding something wrong with his car than they are about the casualty – death is simply a way of life. Even more impressive is how Filho contrasts these realistic skits with surreal images, such as a symbolic severed leg.

As well as Moura’s effortlessly likeable performance, he’s surrounded by a superb supporting cast. Carlos Francisco is superb as Marcelos’ projectionist father-in-law, as is Robério Diógenes as the diabolical police chief Euclides. Gabriel Leone and Roney Villela are terrific as two hitmen who are hot on Marcelo’s trail, as is Kaiony Venâncio as an impoverished gunman. Technically, the film’s sumptuously shot by Evgenia Alexandrova and although tonally all over the place, the score by Tomaz Alves Souza and Mateus Alves soars in the third act, especially in a monumental chase sequence.

Although unconventional in its storytelling, if you can get on board with The Secret Agent and have patience with its themes that may at first seem arbitrary, it’s an enriching experience that’s profound in its exploration of this dark age of Brazilian history. It won’t be for everyone, but this is fearsomely original filmmaking with a brilliant Wagner Moura performance that deftly balances warm characters, surrealism and emotional poignancy – once you get past the somewhat disjointed first half.