Udo Kier

In The Secret Agent (2025), Udo Kier's Hans has found a courteous way of not answering questions. He is an old German who has spent long enough in Brazil to have made evasion a habit. We felt uneasy watching him because the politeness gave us less reassurance than outright rudeness would have done. Kleber Mendonça Filho makes good use of an actor who can draw attention without needing the central role. Hans makes us listen for what he is declining to say.

That quiet courtesy sits some distance from the camp and exaggeration Kier was willing to embrace. He gained notice with the leads in Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974). Work with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the beginning of his long association with Lars von Trier followed in the 1980s. Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991) then helped open an American career spanning art-house films and Hollywood productions.

In Breaking the Waves (1996), Kier plays the Sadistic Sailor, a reminder that his unsettling qualities were not always there for our amusement. The film's painful emotional force comes chiefly from Emily Watson. We recommend it with a firm warning about the suffering von Trier asks us to accept. Familiarity with an actor's camp performances is no reason to expect comfort from every appearance, and this is not a film to approach simply for the pleasure of recognising him.

The difficulty of following Kier from film to film is having to sit through the lesser work he also accepted. He could make a small part memorable; that did not make every film a good one. Swan Song (2021), with Kier as Pat Pitsenbarger, provided a rare later lead, though leading roles are not the only measure of what an actor can do. Start with The Secret Agent for the restraint, and for a director who knows how to use it. Allow for its length: the present-day scenes are where the patience is tested.