Our titular secret agent is Armando (an ideally cast Wagner Moura), a university professor who has been labeled a communist. Truth is Armando is not affiliated with communism nor capitalism in the Brazil of the late 1970's. This is Brazil during a time of military dictatorship and he is stopped at a gas station (where a corpse is on the ground covered by cardboard) and questioned and searched by the police. Armando complies and what is a little amazing is how often we see scenes like this in modern-day movies and expect a bout of violence to emerge. There is no violence and the police take off, yet tension rings in the air. Armando is headed to Recife, the capital of the Brazilian state Pernambuco, to see his child who is living with his in-laws. His in-laws love and miss him but they also know it is dangerous for him to be present (his wife Fátima had passed away). Armando stays with some political dissidents in a sort of hidden refugee enclave, and finds a job at an identity card office building where he tries to find information on his late mother. He has adopted an alias, Marcello, so as to not be discovered by others. Meanwhile, two unlikely hit men are hired by a racist and sexist (to say the least) industrialist named Ghirotti (Luciano Chirolli) who had a past blow-out at a restaurant between Armando and his wife Fatima (Alice Carvalho, in a firecracker of a performance that lasts only a few minutes).
Directed with a virtuoso power by Kleber de Mendonça Vasconcellos Filho, every scene clicks and involves us, from the mundane existence of living in close quarters inside an apartment building, to the identity offices that look and feel banal, to the carnival sequence itself that vibrates with a vivid energy, to the movie theaters showing "The Omen" and "Jaws" where a one couple indulges in fellatio in the crowd, to the busy and crowded street scenes that feel lived in, "The Secret Agent" pulsates with the flavor of life. The film has a burgeoning golden glow throughout, not quite sepia-toned, in its look at a Brazil of carnivals and alluring women, not to mention gays indulging in sexual acts out in the open as one cruises through the city's various parks.
The performances are sublime including the quiet magnetism of Wagner Moura as Armando; the seen-it-all 77-year old woman, Donna Sebastiana (Tânia Maria); who provides a refugee home, or the captivating belly-laughs and charms of the insidious police chief Euclides (Robério Diógenes). The present day scenes involve a female journalist listening to recorded sessions between Armando and a patient political resistance leader Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido). What is most stimulating about the film is that it is mostly cries and whispers, as if the world will collapse if anything leaks in this dictatorship because all ears are open.
What is also special about this film is that it brings back memories for me as a 6-year-old living in Sao Paulo in 1977-78 (the film is set in 1977). The golden glow of the streets seems just right to me (though Sao Paulo was heavily polluted at that time so I can't speak for Recife). I also feel I have seen older spirited women like Sebastiana and I do faintly recall those close quarters in homes where adults would discuss politics. My father even had a beard like Armando has in the opening scenes. So, personal memories aside, "The Secret Agent" deftly works as a passage of time that no longer exists. I would compare it to Costra-Gravas masterful "State of Siege" which dealt with Uruguay's political strife in the 1960's through the 1970's. "The Secret Agent" is a cinematic powerhouse and a real treat.
