Movie Review - The Mole Agent

Last year, Honeyland (2019) was nominated for Best International Feature and Best Documentary Feature at the 92nd Academy Awards. It was the first film to be nominated in both those categories. In order to be nominated for Best International Feature, a country has to submit what it feels is its top film. The country of Macedonia decided to submit a documentary to the Academy. It's rare for any country, even the United States, to consider a documentary as its top film. Because Honeyland broke that barrier, we'll probably see more countries submit documentaries as their top films. For the 93rd Academy Awards, seven countries submitted documentaries. Of those seven, two have also made the Oscar shortlist in the documentary category. One of which is this film, which comes from the Republic of Chile.

Honeyland was a stunning achievement of nonfiction storytelling that was not only cinematic and powerful, but so engaging in its focus and limited scope. This film's scope is a bit wider but not too much. It centers on one location, as Honeyland does, but it's essentially juggling more people. Yet, it doesn't have the seeming intimacy of Honeyland. It feels a bit detached and distant, which is by design, and it's that design, which hampers my connecting with this film fully. Essentially, this film has a premise or framework, which I suppose it needs as a way inside but I question how necessary that framework actually was. By the end, that framework comes across as a gimmick that gets tossed away anyhow.

Sergio Chamy is an octogenarian from South America. He responds to an ad in the newspaper asking for men in his age who are good with technology or basically just know how to operate a smart phone. We learn that Sergio has a family, adult children and grandchildren, but we don't get much else. He says he had a wife who recently died, making him a widower. Yet, it's not clear if that's true. He says he's a widower but the reason that it's in doubt is because the ad in the newspaper is a job where Sergio has to go undercover as a spy. He's hired to be a spy at a nursing home for three months where some people suspect elder abuse is occurring. Sergio's job is to pretend to be a resident there and find out if the allegations are true. As such, he might have been compelled to make up a story about his life. He also might have been telling the truth about being a widower.

One would think if he's going undercover that a lot of hidden cameras would be used, but that's not the case. Writer-director Maite Alberdi was able to bring her own cameras into the nursing home. She didn't have to hide anything. She was able to document things openly. If that was the case, then it makes the whole premise of Sergio going undercover be somewhat moot. The argument might have been that Sergio could get access to certain things that the camera crew couldn't and perhaps report on things that happened at night when visitors possibly weren't there. Yet, that never really seemed to be the case. Alberdi's cameras seemed to go everywhere Sergio did. The pretense just felt extraneous and a narrative device without much value.

The value here ultimately are the conversations that Sergio has with the other nursing home residents. This film was obviously made prior to the coronavirus pandemic, but, since COVID-19, nursing homes have been hit very hard. Currently, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is under fire for his handling of nursing homes. This film becomes ever relevant and important in the wake of Cuomo's issues and the pandemic, as a reminder of how vulnerable and often overlooked nursing homes are. If nothing else, this film underscores the importance of sitting and talking to elderly people, hearing them and making sure they're not just being thrown away. At the same time though, I'm not sure this film ever gets to know any one particular person in the nursing home beyond the sympathetic.

El agente topo.
Not Rated but for general audiences.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 30 mins.

Available on Hulu.