There is little payoff and too much dramatic tension in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s highly acclaimed Portuguese The Secret Agent, a film that speaks in whispers and moans in the muted mode. You get a feeling that there is much happening behind the scenes, as Armando (Wagner Moura) tiptoes his way through a labyrinth of political maneuvering, none of which is particularly gratifying , or even revealing.
This is the world of Costa-Gavras without the cinematic spin. Our attention is not seduced in The Secret Agent. It is given ample slack. We are free to go. If you are sold on closures, then this one is not for you. The Secret Agent operates in hushed code language. It is like The Night Manager with the manager on sick leave, leaving the coast clear for the charlatans to take over.
When we first see Armando in his weatherbeaten yellow Volkswagen, he stops at a petrol station where a dead body has been lying for three days with no one to own or take care of it. It reminded me of the film’s script.
This opening is meant to tell us about the corrosive corruption of the military regime in Brazil in 1977. The atmosphere is tense and squalid. And so what if Donna Summer’s ‘Love To Love You Baby’ and Chicago’s ‘If You Leave Me Now’ play in the background?
The characters are either fooling around or discussing the ramifications of a political turmoil which we feel outside the conversations. But the impact never actually become a part of the narrative.
It’s all about hushed whispers in backrooms, never an in-your-face stocktaking. We gather that Armando is being chased by two assassins, that his wife Fatima was killed by corrupt political elements, that their little son wants to see Steven Spielberg’s Jaws which has just opened, but the boy is underage for the horror.
In the meanwhile, inspired by Jaws a dead shark is brought to the police headquarters with a leg stuck in its mouth.
Huh?
The film wants to make light of the heavy political atmosphere. But the levitational machinations never land. The characters seem cartoonish in their bogus commitments. Only the hero Armond feels sincere, as he is played by an actor, Wagner Moura, who knows what he is doing. Which is more than what we could say about the screenplay, which offers no jumpstart moments, although there is no dearth of potential highs in the drama. Alas, they all seem to be buried under the blizzard of nothingness.
Kleber Mendonça Filho just slogs along with the amorphous screenplay. The characters are committed to a politics that fails to harmonize with any coherent rhythms of the universe.
