Kleber Mendonça's 'The Secret Agent' is an intoxicating political thriller

Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho's "The Secret Agent" opens with a curious warning. “Our story is set in the Brazil of 1977,” white text reads as a yellow Volkswagen Beetle pulls into a gas station, “a period of great mischief.”

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A scene from the play 'The Secret Agent'.

That's an interesting way to describe this period, during the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985, during which hundreds of thousands of people were disappeared (see last year’s best international feature Oscar winner from Brazil, “I'm Still Here," set during the same period). But “The Secret Agent” is more playful and elusive than the straightforward family drama "I'm Still Here,” more “mischievous,” really. Even the title is a bit of a trick. By the end of the film, the identity of the titular secret agent is still abstruse, and that's part of the fun of this tantalizing trickster of a film, a puzzle box of pieces that fit together perfectly: a political thriller; a love letter to the movies; a warm, lived-in portrait of a man, a city, a moment in time.

The film is also an expression of Mendonça Filho’s love for his hometown of Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, in the northeast of Brazil, and the people from there, with their resilience, humor and sense of community. His 2023 documentary, “Pictures of Ghosts,” is a companion piece to “The Secret Agent,” in its careful documentation of his cherished places of Recife: the family apartment, where he shot many films, and the downtown movie theaters that shaped his vision of the world, the temples of cinema where he worshipped.