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Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” opens with a curious warning. “Our story is set in the Brazil of 1977,” white text reads as a yellow Volkswagen Beetle pulls into a gas station, “a period of great mischief.”

That’s an interesting way to describe this period, during the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985, during which hundreds of thousands of people were disappeared (see last year’s best international feature Oscar winner from Brazil, “I’m Still Here,” set during the same period).

But “The Secret Agent” is more playful and elusive than the straightforward family drama “I’m Still Here,” more “mischievous,” really. Even the title is a bit of a trick. By the end of the film, the identity

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