El agente topo

"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.

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.

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.

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.

Good movie, shows a terrible reality. The theme of the movie I think is oblivion. An approach to oblivion is always difficult as it can only be experienced when it is too late. Invites us to think about the responsibility of society in the life of the elderly, it is the responsibility of everyone or only of each one's family. Ungrateful Society or the inevitable pain and forgetfulness of the end of life?