From the opening shots of The Mole Agent, the Chilean film nominated for best documentary feature at this year’s Academy Awards, viewers may feel that they can predict the next hour and a half. There’s the magnifying glass, the case files, the slatted shadows from the film noir tradition—the stage is set for a crime thriller. A private detective conducts recruitment interviews for a spy to investigate an unusual case that has come across his desk: A woman wants to find out if her mother is being abused at a nursing home in El Monte, a suburb of Santiago. And soon enough, Sergio, a sweet 83-year-old widower looking for something to occupy his time, is planted as a spy in the home.
But The Mole Agent isn’t exactly a crime story. Directed and written by Maite Alberdi, a filmmaker from Santiago whose work centers marginalized communities, The Mole Agent turns an anthropological lens toward nursing homes and society’s treatment of older people. For Alberdi, the crime genre is just a facade: Working within it allows The Mole Agent to set viewer expectations before ultimately subverting the clean, traditional crime story to take on the larger and messier conversation about society’s treatment of older people in Chile and beyond.
