“The Secret Agent” by Kleber Mendonça Filho debuted this Sunday in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival. The team of features, with Wagner Moura, arrived on the full red carpet from a frevo block. The film was applauded with enthusiasm for several minutes after the screening and is already mentioned as a strong candidate for the golden palm.
“The Secret Agent” by Kleber Mendonça Filho debuted this Sunday in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival. The team of features, with Wagner Moura, arrived on the full red carpet from a frevo block. The film was applauded with enthusiasm for several minutes after the screening and is already mentioned as a strong candidate for the golden palm.
“The Secret Agent” takes place in Recife in 1977 and explores the political tensions of the time of the Brazilian military dictatorship. This is the first collaboration between Kleber Mendonça Filho and Wagner Moura. The director and the actor together gave an interview a RFI in Cannes.
For Wagner Moura, it was “liberating” to act in Portuguese. He was very happy in filming and with unprecedented collaboration with Kleber Mendonça. According to the actor, “Secret Agent” is an absolutely Brazilian film.
“Kleber transforms his references into something absolutely Brazilian, in a unique way. I mean, it is a genre cinema, which has not been invented in Brazil, but it is a totally Brazilian film. This makes this film an original, strong, powerful, special film”, Loda Moura.
The director of Pernambuco said he had made a chronicle of the past. “It is a Chronicle film of a moment in the history of Brazil that I still remember personally, because I was a child, but at the same time, I think there are many historical research,” he says. The director believes that the film speaks of “resistance” because he maintains the “look in reality”.
History
The plot happens “in a time full of Pirraça” indicates a caption at the beginning of the film. The film follows the return of the university professor Marcelo (Wagner Moura) for Recife. Search for official documents by his mother, a teenager, home of indigenous origin, pregnant by the son of the family of planters.
Marcelo also wants to meet his son and flee from Brazil, because he discovers he is marked to die. People are assassinated, bodies thrown into dams and rivers. One leg is discovered inside a shark, comes to life and comes back to take revenge. The cinematographic quotations from the 70s are numerous, the most explicit is the reference to Steven Spielberg’s “Tubarão”.
The film is a combination of espionage films, political thriller, pastiche, personal report and surreal elements. Explore themes of resistance, identity and memory. “The Secret Agent” has several characteristic elements of the work of Kleber Mendonça Filho.
It is performed after “Ghost Portraits”, also selected in Cannes in 2022, outside the competition. The two films were performed in the same places and face the problem of memory, the resistance, the dialogue with the history of cinema and both have three parts.
The “agent” would be a continuation. “They have the same soul, I would say, because they are two very full films of maintained images, but they could not be more distinct,” he believes.
Political film
Wagner Moura, director of “Marighella”, also faces the question of memory and history of Brazil in her work. He underlines that he likes political films, but says that “The secret agent” is a “different political film”.
“My film” Marighella “is apparently facing. This is a film about people who live in such a crazy situation of these dystopian values that, as Kleber says, to say that” the water is wet “seems a communist thing”, he underlines.
“The Secret Agent” marks the third participation of Kleber Mendonça Filho in the dispute on the Palm d’Oro after Aquarius (2016) and Bacurau (2019) and the fourth in the official selection. The selection of the function strengthens the presence and prestige of Brazilian cinema in the international scenario, after the historic Oscar of “I’m Still here”, which also addresses the theme of the dictatorship.
Click the main image to listen to the full interview
Source: Terra
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
