The Mole Agent: DocPlay review

It may have its spy trappings, with its Saul Bass-style music and Bond themed opening titles, but Maite Alberdi's The Mole Agent becomes less about the subterfuge as it goes on.

At its heart, there's a simple premise - an investigator wants to hire an elderly man to check into a Chilean rest home after a client's told him their mother is being abused. Simple stuff, and the kind of film that could really be an expose of the horrors in care homes abroad, with themes that would be both prevalent and relevant for local audiences.

However, once investigator Romulo finds his honey trap in the form of 83-year-old Sergio the bait is set. Playing early on on its "less 007 more nearly 87" comedic edges, there's much set up of getting Sergio au fait with technology, learning how to make clandestine calls, and getting him ready for the spy lifestyle - amid concerns from his daughter that the recently-widowed Sergio still needs to be visited by family.

It's a disarming start, and one that soon veers away from where the film is actually going.

As it proceeds, The Mole Agent becomes a soul-crushing expose not of abuse, but of degrees of neglect and loneliness.

From discordant wailings from other rooms as Sergio gets comfortable to one resident constantly flailing her arms outside of the locked front gate desperate to get out, via one resident being told her long-dead mother is on the phone to calm her, The Mole Agent gradually eats away at your viewing soul, shaping itself into something that's poignant and heart-breaking.

From residents looking lost or forlorn, to others hitting on Sergio for "looking gentlemanly", Alberdi's camera catches the rest home residents gradually letting down their initial guard and opening up in slices about how life is for them. But rather than using talking heads, Alberdi simply positions the camera to capture the moment, and makes it all the more earnest for doing so.

To save the doco from becoming so bleak, Alberdi continues with the "spy in the care home" elements, setting up moments of Sergio sending reports and looking shifty in various corridors. But in truth, this is really only to allow the initial viewers to not feel betrayed by the premise.

Ultimately, The Mole Agent will touch you in ways you'd not expect, and while it doesn't really reveal anything new about the human condition later in life, it does build on the theme of isolation that's become so prevalent in the pandemic and compound the soul-destroying sadness that lies at the heart of most of humanity.