Agente Duplo

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.

"The Mole Agent" (2020 release from Chile; 84 min.) is a non-fiction documentary about a nursing home in Santiago, Chile. As the movie opens, Sergio is among a group of old men responding to a newspaper ad looking for men between 80 and 90 years old. Sergio finds out that a woman wants to hire someone to spy/infiltrate the nursing home where her mother is staying to make sure her mother is treated properly. Sergio is hired, and loaded with eyeglasses that can record as well as a smart phone, Sergio arrives for a 3 month stay at the nursing home. He gets to know the nursing home residents, including the elderly mom of the woman who engaged him. It's not long before he gets the first surprise... At this point we are 10 min. into the film.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from Chilean writer-director Maite Alberdi. Her prior work includes, among others, the excellent "The Grown-Ups". Here she tackles a different topic altogether: how are the elderly (all of them seem to be in their 80s if not older) residents treated by staff of this Catholic nursing home? Obviously I'm not going to spoil the outcome, but let me instead offer that these frank observations are at times very funny (one of the women residents develops a crush on Sergio), and at times very moving (all of these elderly people just want some T.L.C. from their family, nothing less, nothing more). The final report that Sergio makes will make your heart ache (take a guess how many times in the 3 months Sergio was there, the woman who engaged him to "infiltrate" the nursing home, actually visited her own elderly mother...). Bottom line: this is a delightful "little" movie that has so much to show us from the human perspective.

"The Mole Agent" opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati, fully adhering to all COVID-19 protocols. Not that it mattered as it turns out that the Labor Day early evening screening where I saw this at was in fact a private showing: I was literally the only person in the theater. This has happened to me quite regularly ever since theater have reopened. I honestly don't see how this can be done on a profitable basis... In the meantime, if you are looking for a documentary focusing on a slice of humanity, I'd readily suggest you check this out, be it in the theater (if you can), on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray.

A different documentary, a fiction, a contract between a detective and a senior citizen, all fake, but it generated a beautiful documentary, moving, sensitive, delicate, dramatic and sad, the solitude of the asylum, the parties, the generosity of those works with these elderly people... Pleasant surprise in the middle of the Oscars, in a sabbatical, inclusive and social year, a pity that their competitors are strong, Coletiv, Crip and Polvo, the four deserve...

I'm still pretty shocked after watching this. At first it seems like such a fun and silly documentary taking tropes from spy movies but then it suddenly pulled the rug out from under you and breaks your heart into a million pieces.

It is a rare and intimate look into a care home that just lays out the lives of these amazing people living in there and allows you to see them in this unique way.

You really get to know these people and you see what they want most in like, human interaction, love, friendship, just someone who will take 5 minutes to talk to them like they are real people. There is a moment that just breaks my heart when a family come to visit Sergio and this lady sees them come in. Her face lights up at seeing these people coming to visit Sergio, she doesn't even know them but she is just so happy to see people.

I would honestly be mortified if I was any of the children of the people in this movie. To see their sadness and their need for human connection.

I also want to say that Sergio seems like an incredible person. His heart is so big and he cares so much for people.

There is a lady who writes poetry after reading an amazing poem she says "life is cruel". I think that message will stay with people after watching this movie.

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-