New York Film Festival - Fourth Dispatch

The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho) - Wagner Moura gives an electric performance as a dissident in 1977 Brazil who finds precarious protection amongst a shelter for political refugees before attempting to flee the country. Those who fell for the Oscar-validated I'm Still Here (Walter Salles, 2024) should enjoy this adept thriller skewering the Brazilian military dictatorship of the era. But at 158 minutes, it overstays its welcome. And it betrays a straightforward conventionality unworthy of the dislocations of Filho's Bacurau (2019), one of the finest films of our rapidly aging century. 

Grade: B+ 

Duse (Pietro Marcello) - I first heard of the legendary actress and Sarah Bernhardt rival Eleonora Duse (1858-1924) from All About Eve in Bill's rant to Eve about what The Theatre means (although my preteen, pre-internet mind heard it as "Eleanor Adusa"). Then for forty years, I never gave her another thought until this most welcome biopic. Marcello picks up Duse's story in the last act of her life, past previous glories and desperate to find her way back to audiences scarred by WWI. She even breaks bread with Mussolini over a doomed plan to recreate Athens in Italy. It's the kind of narrative that would have worked well with the anachronisms Marcello sprinkled throughout Martin Eden (2019), another film about a fiery artistic temperament. Like The Secret Agent, unfortunately, there's a safe, Oscary feel to the project that makes one long for the lopsided structure of Martin Eden or the proto-art-film longueurs of the Italian diva film of the 1910s. That it all still works is testament to Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's blistering performance as Duse. Out of historical sync, in tears 90% of the time, Tedeschi's Duse exhausts herself trying to find a time and a place for her art. A full century after her death, she feels right at home in 2025. 

Grade: A-minus