The Secret Agent, the latest feature by Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho, opens on a desolate, sun-soaked gas station outside Recife, a bustling coastal metropolis in Brazil’s northeast. It’s Carnaval 1977, “ uma época cheia de pirraça ”—a time of mischief, the subtitles tell us. For those familiar with Brazilian history, this places us roughly halfway through the country’s 21-year military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985. A man from out of town pulls up in a candy-yellow