SummaryWhen a family grows concerned for their mother’s well-being in a retirement home, private investigator Romulo hires 83-year-old Sergio to pose as a new resident and undercover spy inside the facility. The Mole Agent follows Sergio as he struggles to balance his assignment with his increasing involvement in the lives of the many residents...
SummaryWhen a family grows concerned for their mother’s well-being in a retirement home, private investigator Romulo hires 83-year-old Sergio to pose as a new resident and undercover spy inside the facility. The Mole Agent follows Sergio as he struggles to balance his assignment with his increasing involvement in the lives of the many residents...
The Mole Agent is a perfect film. From a technical and emotional viewpoint equally, The Mole Agent possesses no flaws. Yes, as with every documentary, manipulation is openly displayed and validity can always be questioned, but The Mole Agent dissuades any inkling of pessimism or negativity through its unabashed sincerity.
That Maite Alberdi’s camera itself is present in The Mole Agent as a quasi-ethical concern suits the way Sergio, as he shuffles through the home’s hallways, gradually comes to be uncomfortable with his own surveillance.
Uno de los mejores ejemplos del reciente cine latinoamericano. Con un lenguaje sencillo y emotivo nos pone a reflexionar sobre los sentimientos y las condiciones en las que viven los adultos mayores. Sin falta.
A refreshing, beautifully made documentary set in a nursing home under suspicion of elder neglect, Maite Alberdi's The Mole Agent begins with its tongue in cheek but grows quite moving by its end.
The movie’s straddling of the dramatic and the documentary forms is unsettling. Unless you unquestioningly accept its method, this chronicle can look like a glaring invasion of privacy. But the film’s people are moving, and the payoff is compassionate, humane and worth heeding.
A moving exploration of the realities of growing old, Maite Alberdi’s documentary effectively blends documentary with dramatic elements to charming, if not always transparent, effect.
The fear of old age’s erosion of our faculties, our agency and our relevance is a potent, almost paralysing one: the way we perceive and treat our elders invariably reveals something about ourselves. In her charming and off-kilter documentary The Mole Agent, Chilean director Maite Alberdi confronts that fear literally through the eyes of her subject.
Sergio himself has real gentleness and is a lovely character, and there is some amiable comedy about how he is starting to enjoy himself in the home. But he is marooned in a tricksy, gimmicky film.
First of all, you have to know that 'The Mole Agent' blends documentary with some fiction; this way, you'll enjoy what director Maite Alberdi has prepared. This film's premise is bonkers, but its value lies in the way it tries to bring awareness to the elders, sometimes forgotten and abandoned in retirement homes. The execution may be controversial, but the stories shown here will make you rethink one thing or two about old age.
When the daughter of a nursing home patient suspects that her mother is being subjected to elder abuse and theft of her possessions, she hires an investigator to verify the claims through surveillance conducted by an elderly "spy" he recruits to check in as a temporary resident. What the mole finds, however, doesn't exactly jibe with the accusations but, instead, reveals a very different truth about what it's like to be a resident of one of these facilities. Despite this, though, director Maite Alberdi's latest documentary offering struggles with telling its story, leading viewers to believe it's headed in one direction while actually moving in another less-than-apparent manner, one that's not well delineated until the film's closing moments. What's more, it's not always clear just how much of a "documentary" this release really is, given a premise that seems to be more than a little "planned" in nature. Also, its attempts at humor, though cute at first, fade as the picture progresses and reveals a more substantive, serious narrative, one that makes its comedic material look cheeky as a consequence. There indeed is an important message here, but its presentation deserved better treatment in the finished product.
(espaañol / English)
Extracto
El agente topo (por Netflix)
Este documental le sigue los pasos a Sergio, uno señor de ochenta y pico contratado por una agencia de detectives para infiltrarse en un geriátrico como residente e investigar cómo tratan a la madre de una clienta de la agencia internada allí.
¿Qué es real, ficcional o metaficcional en este documental? ¿Hasta dónde están dispuestos a llegar los documentalistas para filmar aquello y a aquéllos que investigan? ¿Cuáles son los límites éticos?
Lamentablemente todo El agente topo está montado sobe un engaño. Más que un infiltrado de una agencia de detectives, el “agente” Sergio es un infiltrado de la directora, que cambia el foco y comienza a interesarse por los diálogos y testimonios de las engañadas ancianas del geriátrico. Terminé de ver este documental con una sensación de incomodidad cercana a la indignación: la de haber presenciado una desleal invasión a la privacidad de un grupo de ancianas para exhibir su dolor y servir como instrumentos de la directora y su dispositivo cinematográfico, de un experimento. Y con la perplejidad de que casi nadie se haya planteado estas cuestiones éticas o las minimizaran, sobre todo los críticos y los jurados de los festivales.
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Abstract
The Mole Agent (by Netflix)
This documentary follows in the footsteps of Sergio, an eighty-something man hired by a detective agency to infiltrate a nursing home as a resident and investigate how the mother of an agency client hospitalized there is treated.
What is real, fictional or metafictional in this documentary? How far are documentary makers willing to go to film that and those they investigate? What are the ethical limits?
Unfortunately, the entire agent mole is mounted on a hoax. More than an infiltrator from a detective agency, the "agent" Sergio is an infiltrator of the director, who changes the focus and begins to be interested in the dialogues and testimonies of the deceived elderly women of the nursing home. I finished watching this documentary with a feeling of discomfort close to indignation: that of having witnessed a disloyal invasion of the privacy **** of elderly women to display their pain and serve as instruments of the director and her cinematographic device, of an experiment. And with the perplexity that hardly anyone has raised these ethical questions or downplayed them, especially the critics and festival juries.
Review
A lady (who does not appear on camera) hires the services of a detective agency to find out how they treat her mother, admitted to a nursing home. This documentary follows in the footsteps of Sergio, an eighty-something man hired by the agency to infiltrate the nursing home as a resident and carry out the investigation.
This documentary by the Chilean Maite Alberdi raises numerous elements for analysis and debate, some frankly uncomfortable.
I have read notes about how this documentary was filmed and a report to its director that were far from reassuring me.
The detective agency and its director are real, as well as the casting they carry out to choose Sergio as a mole. The "mission" entrusted to him is also real. The nursing home had previously accepted the presence of cameras for the filming of a documentary.
But unfortunately the entire Mole Agent is mounted on a hoax. More than an infiltrator of the detective agency, Sergio is an infiltrator of the director, who changes the focus and begins to be interested in the dialogues and testimonies that he generates with the elderly women in the nursing home. And like any mole, he deceives about his identity and his goals to all the companions who begin to bond with him, who by the way is a charming person.
To what extent do these women know that what they express (and to an impostor) is being filmed? Frail people, some of them already with signs of cognitive decline.
The detective moments are hilarious and the dialogues with the old ladies range from the picturesque to the moving.
But the purpose of this whole montage is not clear to me:
1) Reflect the daily life of a nursing home?
2) Give a voice to people who generally don't have it?
3) A testimony to sensitize the audience about how the elderly in general suffer in these institutions of loneliness, depression and abandonment by their families? Is this really a novelty? I finished watching this documentary with a feeling of discomfort close to indignation: that of having witnessed a disloyal invasion of the privacy **** of elderly women to display their pain and serve, in short, as instruments for showing off the director and his cinematic device, from an experiment. And with the perplexity that almost no one has raised these ethical questions or minimizes them, starting with the critics and the festival juries.
Production Company
Micromundo Producciones,
Motto Pictures,
Sutor Kolonko,
Volya Films,
Malvalanda,
Consejo Nacional de Televisión,
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB),
Filmosonido Estudios,
ITVS International,
P.O.V./American Documentary,
Sonamos,
Sundance Institute Documentary Fund,
Tribeca Film Institute