The Secret Agent: Superlative in all respects

The Secret Agent (2025) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong, bloody violence, sexual content, profanity and nudity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.15.26

Brazilian filmmakers clearly are drawn to unsettling dramas set during the 21-year military dictatorship that ousted the democratically elected president in 1964, both as a means of addressing their country’s recent past, and as an uncomfortable parallel to current events … particularly in the United States.

 

Armando (Wagner Moura, center, smiling) finds a safe and comfortable haven in a
group home, among fellow refugees.

Writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s new film arrives hot on the heels of Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, which hit our shores early last year. But while that film is heavily autobiographical, based on Salles’ mother’s memoirs, Mendonça Filho’s compelling drama is a fictitious, Hollywood-style production very much in the mold of 1970s American “paranoia thrillers” such as The Parallax View and The Conversation.

Indeed, Mendonça Filho admits to having emulated the style of directors such as Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.

 

This cleverly crafted narrative unfolds in tantalizing, teasing dollops. It’s a grimly melancholy study of how ordinary people become complicit in an ongoing atmosphere of corruption, by gradually accepting it as business as usual.

 

The year is 1977; we meet Armando Solimões (a note-perfect Wagner Moura) as he travels during the sweltering carnival holiday, driving a Volkswagen Beetle (which were ubiquitous in Brazil, during that decade). A stop for gas exposes both the jaw-dropping disregard of a recent violent encounter, and the casual corruption of a passing police officer who subjects Armando to an unnecessary “interview.”

 

He handles that quasi-interrogation with cool, mildly amused detachment, aware that this is a routine “game” that must be played. But, as we soon learn, Armando’s sang froid is a carefully crafted pose, because he’s a man on the run. He’s heading to the northeastern Atlantic Coast city of Recife, where his in-laws have been caring for his young son, Fernando (Enzo Nunes).

 

Armando’s wife, Fátima, is out of the picture. We don’t find out why, or how, for awhile.

 

He has been directed to a “safe house” run by Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), a venerable former anarcho-communist who has given similar refuge to a gaggle of other political dissidents.

 

Maria is terrific in this role, giving Dona Sebastiana an adorable blend of feisty resilience, shrewd character judgement and sharp-eyed intelligence; this woman has seen it all, and survives to tell countless tales. Maria definitely should have garnered a Supporting Actress Oscar nod; she’s leagues above at least two of the actresses who did make the cut.

I'm Still Here: A formidable tribute to one woman's courage

I'm Still Here (2024) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, drug use, fleeting nudity and occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Political statements don’t come much stronger than this one.

 

Nor as authentic.

 

Rubens (Selton Mello) and his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) enjoy a playful moment
with their two youngest children, Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira) and Maria (Cora Mora),
on the beach in front of their home.

Brazilian director Walter Salles’ quietly chilling docu-drama is based faithfully on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s Ainda Estou Aqui, a 2015 biography of his mother, Eunice, and what she and her family endured in the early 1970s.

The setting is Rio de Janeiro, six years into the 21-year military dictatorship that overthrew the democratically elected president in 1964. Eunice (Fernanda Torres), her husband Rubens (Selton Mello) and their five children — Vera (Valentina Herszage), Eliana (Luiza Kosovski), Nalu (Barbara Luz), Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira) and Maria (Cora Mora) — live comfortably in a welcoming beachside home. Their doors and windows are always open, beckoning friends and neighbors.

 

Beloved live-in housekeeper Zeze (Pri Helena) may as well be a family member.

 

Salles spends considerable time on this idyllic introduction. The family often is at the beach, Marcelo kicking a soccer ball with friends, while his sisters play volleyball. Eunice floats contentedly in the calm ocean waters. Meals are cheerfully boisterous, often with visitors. Marcelo finds an adorable stray dog on the beach; Rubens hasn’t the heart to refuse his son’s entreaty to adopt it.

 

The warmth, tenderness and conviviality displayed in these early scenes is the best argument I’ve yet seen for establishing an Academy Awards category for casting directors. In this case, Leticia Naveira has assembled an amazing ensemble of actors; the children, in particular, display the closely knit camaraderie and love we’d expect from an actual family. Interactions with their parents, and peers and other adults, are equally persuasive.

 

These establishing scenes are an intoxicating blend of Adrian Teijido’s gorgeous 35mm cinematography — as luxurious as the beachside setting — and amateur footage shot by Vera, with her new Super 8 camera

 

If all of this looks and feels unexpectedly intimate, it arrives honestly. Salles has long known the Paiva family; he spent part of his adolescence in the house that becomes central to this film. Directors often regard certain projects as a “labor of love,” and that’s absolutely, clearly the case here.

Boy and the World: A colorful, lyrical — and grim — parable

Boy and the World (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

This one sneaks up on you.

Brazil’s Academy Award nominee in the Animated Feature category is a dazzling, extremely personal and ultimately quite sobering allegory by writer/director Alê Abreu ... although, at first, it doesn’t seem that way.

Having made his way to the big city, Cuca is dismayed to discover a wasteland of trash
and human misery: the result of unchecked industrialization that rewards the wealthy
"pretty people" at the expense of the laborers who support their lavish lifestyles.

The opening act is aggressively simplistic, the characters little more than stick figures placed against the sort of random, wildly colorful landscape that one would expect from a small child playing with crayons. Indeed, our young hero — Cuca — is a small child.

He’s introduced while enjoying the carefree playtime typical of innocent youngsters brought up in a cozy rural environment: darting through fields, and allowing his imagination to run riot in an opulent kaleidoscope of fanciful adventures (such as jumping high enough to land on the overhead clouds).

Cuca can be happy via the simple act of planting a seed, particularly when helped by his beloved parents.

The pacing is slow, the cacophonous, hand-drawn visuals unapologetically haphazard and weird. The apparent “story,” such as it is, unfolds without dialog ... or, at least, without dialog that matters. Brief and occasional conversations emerge as little more than unintelligible grunts and whistles, much like the “talking” in Britain’s Shaun the Sheep.

Instead of dialog, Cuca’s escapades unfold against a lyrical musical score by Ruben Feffer and Gustavo Kurlat: merely a hint of the rich, genre-blending melodies to come.

The alluring visuals and music notwithstanding, you’ll likely start to chafe, wondering if anything of consequence is coming. The answer is absolutely, but — at least initially — patience is required.

Matters turn a bit more serious one morning, as Cuca watches his father depart on an oddly metallic, centipede-esque train (the first hint that Abreu’s animation style won’t remain as minimalist as we might expect). The boy doesn’t understand why Dad is leaving, although we assume the latter is seeking work. But Cuca isn’t willing to wait behind, like his patient mother; he charges out of the house, determined to reunite his family.

And thus begins a journey that unfolds like a tapestry — deliberately — and becomes increasingly complicated and politically charged, just as Abreu’s animation style turns equally complex.