The Mole Agent, an intriguing fly-on-the-wall documentary from Chile, takes an unusual approach to the subject of the treatment of the elderly.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 18, 2021

The Mole Agent is simultaneously both a very soft and very hard film to watch retrospectively in the context of the coronavirus, but it is always humane.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 16, 2021

Sounds depressing. Its big reveal was that it was often the exact opposite. Sweet, charming and poignant, it was a meditation on growing old, loneliness and making a life when confined in an institution.

| Original Score: 35 | Mar 30, 2021

In an era when the pandemic has shone a light onto the elderly and the care system, The Mole Agent is a particularly compelling piece of cinema.

| Mar 11, 2021

We didn't get a James Bond film in 2020, but who needs one when we have Maite Alberdi's charming hybrid drama-documentary.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 11, 2020

A fun little diversion, but nothing more.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 10, 2020

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.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 10, 2020

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.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 9, 2020

It's so much more than a whodunnit, and all but the hardest hearts will fall in love with its spirited group of characters who have so much left to give.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 2, 2020

What I missed in the trailer-and, honestly, one could almost miss in the film itself-is the detail that elevates it to an entirely different level of fascination: The Mole Agent is a documentary.

| Oct 22, 2020

The deadening/enlivening line that Alberdi walks here is something like that between surface twee and bone-deep pathos...but it's elevated through the buy-in of its subjects.

| Sep 15, 2020

There's humor and intrigue, but it's Sergio's blossoming friendships with a number of the women in the nursing home that make this covert operation brim with grace.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 4, 2020

The film's people are moving, and the payoff is compassionate, humane and worth heeding.

| Sep 2, 2020

The documentary succeeds with its tenderness, while vividly reminding us how easily society can forget its elders.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 1, 2020

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.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 31, 2020

Alberdi's comic-caper approach soon fizzles. Like Sergio, the film is hunting for drama, something to merit the 007 guitar

| Original Score: C | Jan 31, 2020

Funny, poignant and finely crafted.

| Jan 27, 2020

"The Mole Agent" may not look like a documentary, but it builds to a poetic finale enmeshed in emotional authenticity.

| Original Score: A | Jan 25, 2020