El Agente Topo

I'm sure I wasn't the only one in the audience surprised by this one. Expecting a Jacques Tati or Peter Sellers bumbling detective comedy, we were instead served a heartfelt look into nursing home life. I've not yet had a close relative in a nursing home but the depiction of such a life as presented in this tragicomedy rang true. I was glad to have had this close look into the small pleasures, the great loneliness, and the irrepressible human spirit in its most twilight years.

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.

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.

"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.

"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.