The Secret Agent Review: Carnival, Conspiracy, and a Father’s Flight

1977 Recife unfolds as a living organism: sweat-soaked streets pulse with Carnival drums while the long arm of Brazil’s military dictatorship flexes its power. Into this fevered tableau arrives Marcelo, a reserved technology researcher traveling under an alias, determined to reunite with his young son.

What begins as a fugitive’s silent flight quickly morphs into a labyrinthine odyssey through back-alley safe houses and clandestine apartment blocks. Amid the roar of costumed revelers, absurdist shocks—a human leg surfacing from a shark’s belly, a two-faced cat prowling secret corridors—inject moments of dark humor that thrill and disquiet in equal measure.

From the moment Marcelo smooth-talks an indifferent highway officer to the instant he steps into a dimly lit identification office, the film’s alchemy of suspense and surreal detours stakes its claim: this is a period thriller that breathes, bleeds, and revels in its own richly textured sense of time and place.

Narrative & Thematic Architecture

The story vaults straight into tension with Marcelo’s roadside arrival: a half-covered corpse decays under the sun while two apathetic policemen demand hush money. That in medias res moment signals a world where life is cheap and authority is arbitrary. Marcelo’s escape leads him to Recife’s heart, where Carnival’s euphoric chaos cloaks a tight-knit resistance network. Here, under the watchful eye of a 77-year-old matriarch, he and his son find shelter—and the first glimmers of hope.

By day, Marcelo assumes a desk at the Identification Records Office, hunting for proof of his mother’s long-erased existence. This quest threads through dusty archives, revealing how regimes distort history by silencing individual narratives. Meanwhile, the rumor-milled “hairy leg”—pulled from shark carcasses, whispered in tabloid headlines, and imagined rampaging through gay cruising grounds—grows into a grotesque metaphor for state-sanctioned persecution, its absurdity underscoring genuine terror.

As two contract killers close in and a corrupt police chief straddles loyalty and self-interest, tension tightens like a noose. Then, in a series of present-day vignettes, a researcher transcribes cassette recordings that piece together Marcelo’s fate. When adult Fernando unearths the past, the narrative threads of exile, belonging, and generational legacy snap into focus: history, once nearly expunged, resurfaces through bloodlines and cassette tape’s static hiss.

Character & Performance Analysis

Walter Moura’s Marcelo is a study in quiet magnetism. With soulful eyes and measured restraint, he inhabits every scene with a sense of concealed power—equal parts charming interlocutor and furtive survivor. His transformation from composed outsider to desperate father unfolds in understated shifts: a tightened jaw here, a lingering glance there.

Beside him, young Fernando brings both comic relief and poignant vulnerability. His Jaws-inspired drawings and wide-eyed curiosity become emblematic of innocence in peril; moments of shared silence between father and son—whether over a whispered bedtime ritual or a sudden Carnival hush—deepen their bond without a word spoken.

The eclectic community surrounding them anchors the film’s heart. Dona Sebastiana, the steely-eyed matriarch, exudes warmth that belies decades of lurking danger; her apartment block household of Angolan exiles, queer runaways, and embattled academics forms a surrogate family whose solidarity resonates long after the credits.

Opposite this sanctuary stand the antagonists: two contract killers whose silent menace punctuates the film’s most taut sequences, and the local police chief whose uneasy patronage of Marcelo underscores the regime’s paradoxical cruelty. Small yet vivid cameos—Udo Kier’s bullet-scarred German exile, a demonic possession at an Omen screening, the two-headed Janus cat—add layers of eccentricity that never dilute the stakes but instead illuminate the regime’s surreal grip on daily life.

Technical & Artistic Craft

Cinematographer Pedro Sousa’s use of Panavision anamorphic lenses bathes every frame in sun-bleached saturation, evoking 1970s film stock while capturing Recife’s riotous color palette. Vintage VW bugs rumble down crowded avenues; cramped identification offices gleam with bureaucratic dread; shuttered movie palaces loom like relics of communal memory. Production and costume design converge to recreate a city in mid-turbulence, from bell-bottomed revelers to peeling propaganda posters.

The soundscape oscillates between the relentless pulse of Carnival brass and moments of mournful hush. Brazilian stompers collide with period American hits—Donna Summer’s breathy moans, Chicago’s plaintive ballads—while tape-deck clicks and distant street vendors ground the film in analog authenticity.

Editing strikes a delicate balance: languid long takes linger on human faces and architectural detail, then snap into sudden absurdist jolts—a zombie leg materializing in midnight foliage—heightening the uncanny undercurrent. The dual timelines, past and present, weave together seamlessly, each cut guided by the hiss of cassette recordings.

At its core, the film bears Kleber Mendonça Filho’s unmistakable vision: a restless curiosity for how political reality and playful horror entwine. Carnival serves both as euphoric spectacle and camouflage for state violence, a carnival mirror reflecting the absurd lengths to which power will go to erase dissent. In this vibrant sémiotique, celebration and subterfuge share the same drumbeat.

The Secret Agent premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2025, where it was nominated for the Palme d’Or.

Full Credits

Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho

Writer: Kleber Mendonça Filho

Producers: Emilie Lesclaux, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Wagner Moura, Brent Travers

Co-Producers: Sol Bondy, Fred Burle, Erik Glijnis, Leontine Petit, Olivier Père

Executive Producer: Dora Amorim

Cast: Wagner Moura, Udo Kier, Gabriel Leone, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Thomás Aquino, Hermila Guedes, Isabél Zuaa, Alice Carvalho, João Vitor Silva, Suzy Lopes, Rubens Santos

Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Evgenia Alexandrova

Editors: Matheus Farias, Eduardo Serrano

Composers: Mateus Alves, Tomaz Alves Souza