Female Film Critics 24/375
Right now, as ever, we urgently need an amusing, upbeat, charming film. Welcome, then, to The Mole Agent, director Maite Alberdi’s spy story in which eighty-three-year-old Sergio infiltrates a Chilean nursing home. His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to assess the quality of care or neglect, an investigation prompted by a concerned daughter of her resident mother.
Read more
Both a charming story about a most unlikely spy and a poignant meditation on the loneliness of growing old, Maite Alberdi’s engaging film The Mole Agent isn’t your everyday documentary. Like the Chilean filmmaker’s previous films, it has its own rhythm and style, feeling like a hybrid of nonfiction and carefully observed drama.
Read more
An elderly Chilean man, Sergio, spots a want ad in a newspaper that requires applicants to be a male retiree between the ages of 80 and 90 as a 007-like theme plays in the background. They need to be “independent, discrete and competent with technology.” Hence, that is the way Maite Alberdi’s hybrid doc/secret-agent thriller The Mole Agent kicks off.
Read more
Director Maite Alberdi’s creative, captivating new film The Mole Agent feels like a rather slow narrative feature, in which not enough happens, until you remember it’s a documentary. Alberdi’s hybridization of staid drama and cinema vérité makes for poignant, intense viewing. The film will stay with you longterm, both as a bit of melancholia and as a cautionary tale to show compassion and attention to our aging loved ones.
Read more