Review: 'The Mole Agent' is a documentary that plays like a sly, and touching, caper comedy
Like a good spy thriller, director Maite Alberti’s documentary “The Mole Agent” works because of some very clever misdirection — going one way when you think it’s going somewhere else — and because the spy in question is so devastatingly charming.
Our hero, Sergio Chamy, is new to the spy game. He’s an 83-year-old widower from Santiago, Chile, who answers an ad in the newspaper. The man who placed the ad, Rómulo Aitken, is looking to hire an elderly man, between 80 and 90, who’s “competent” with technology.
Aitken is a private investigator, and his client wants to know whether her mother, living in a nursing home about 35 miles outside of Santiago, is being ripped off or abused by the staff there. Aitken wants to put someone inside the nursing home who can blend in, and get footage via some sophisticated spy cameras. Sergio fits the bill to be that man on the inside.
Sergio has to learn the job, and fast. First he has trouble identifying the client’s mother, Sonia — and once he does, he has to be careful not to ask obvious questions. Sergio also has to deal with Rómulo’s impatience and his criticism of Sergio’s daily reports.
While Sergio is investigating, he’s also making fast friends with many of the women at the care facility. They’re a lively bunch of characters, including one who decides instantly that she wants to marry him and another whose mind is so addled that the staff fakes phone falls to her from her (presumably long-dead) mother to calm her down.
At the same time, Alberti’s documentary crew has arranged to go into the home, to capture the residents’ daily life — and the home’s managers have agreed to let the crew follow around their newest resident: Sergio. The crew’s sedate footage, intercut with the jumpy images from Sergio’s spy cameras, make for an oddly exciting depiction of everyday life.
While you’re concerned that Alberti is setting you up for an exposé of the harsh conditions at a nursing home, the real story is much more touching: The day-to-day loneliness of these elderly people, largely ignored by the families who are paying to keep them there. Only once do we see relatives visit someone in the home — Sergio’s daughter, who’s in on the caper, and her family for his 84th birthday.
Throughout “The Mole Agent,” Alberti gives us tender vignettes of elderly people contemplating the short time they have left in this world. The film also gives us, in Sergio, a graceful reminder that no one is too old to make the most out of life.
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‘The Mole Agent’
★★★1/2
Available starting Friday, September 4, on the Salt Lake Film Society’s SLFS@Home virtual cinema. Running time: 90 minutes; in Spanish, with subtitles.