El Agente Topo

I started watching it with mistrust, but in the end it stole my heart. Amazing how reality can be so bittersweet. Recommended especially for young people.

What begins as an amusing bumbling spy/detective movie, in the ilk of The Pink Panther or The Naked Gun, slowly transforms into one of the warmest and most heartfelt documentaries you'll ever experience. The transformation occurs gradually and subtly. About two thirds of the way through, we finally understand the type of movie we have been watching all along. This isn't a spy movie - it's a story about loneliness, growing old, and the importance of human connection. The story: When a woman suspects her mother is suffering abuse in an elderly home, she hires a private investigator. The private investigator decides to hire an 83-year-old man, Sergio to enter the home posing as a new member. But he's not there for living assistance. He's there to investigate the home's staff and members, reporting his findings to the private investigator. He's there to be the mole agent. Of course, the 83-year-old spy angle is merely a hook. While Sergio quickly proves to be a comically ineffective spy, he simultaneously reveals himself to be an endlessly charming gentleman who endears himself to other members of the home. His friendships form the heart the movie and will leave audiences rushing out to hug their loved ones.

"Life is cruel, after all." Resident Petita

In writer-director Maile Alberdi's sweet Spanish documentary, The Mole Agent, about a nursing home, life is not cruel. While slower minds and bodies come with the territory, the filmmakers catch almost everyone happy enough and involved in their little scenarios, created by their minds or the adults given responsibility for them.

Sergio (Sergio Chamy), a dapper 80-year-old, is hired to infiltrate a home to find out suspected abuse within a three-month period. He is immediately a hit with the ladies: He listens intently ("If you feel like crying, cry"), is always gentlemanly, talks romantically without crossing any of the appropriate lines with peers in the last years of their lives. And he has oodles of compassion.

He finds as he reports back regularly to this employer that a harmony and happiness pervade. In the most egregious malfeasance, a lady steals scarves and hides them. So bad.

I've heard most of those reading my review, and I, will one day need a home for themselves or loved ones. It would behoove us to see this benign inside look at the San Francisco Nursing Home to help us take heart that a true home could await in pleasant surroundings with like-minded seniors.

The Mole Agent, Sergio, is no James Bond but rather the embodiment of a senior most prized by residents as "autonomous." Being on his own and easily navigating the later years is an ideal we all can aspire to. These filmmakers have set the standard and neutralized the common stereotypes and clichés that plague thought about nursing homes.

Most of all, the documentary is good filmmaking that seems authentic and caring. Although some of the shots feel set up, it overall has a breezy attitude that will help others to see the good in a much-reviled profession. On Prime.

A funny and sweet documentary about an elderly man who takes a job as a double agent in a retirement community to report back on the treatment of one of its residents, whose daughter suspects is receiving poor care.

What the man finds instead is a nice community of old people trying to make the best of their loneliness. He makes a lot of friends and begins to enjoy his time there, but nevertheless finds a new appreciation for his own independence and his daughter, who hasn't abandoned him the way so many of the others who he befriends have been abandoned by their own families.

I thought other countries were generally better than America about taking care of its elderly, but this movie indicates that at least in Chile, where it's set, there's just as much of a tendency in children to let the care of their aging parents become somebody else's problem.

Grade: A-

Noticing this listed on my local PBS channel, I expected an ordinary documentary. Instead I found a deeply moving, multifaceted and fullfledged movie, with unexpected "stars" who are real people, living out their real lives. It left me with the desire to know more about each of them, and huge gratitude to my family who move everything aside to make sure my father can continue to live comfortably in his own home, with daily visits - and even more gratitude for my daughter who gives up everything to keep me happy in HER home, following unexpected multiple health catastrophes leaving me disabled at 60. Watch this movie, please, and see where it touches you. If it doesn't, watch it again.