Everybody Knows
Starring Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darin, Carla Campra
Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Reviewed by Michael Dalton
[rating: 3/5]
From the minute Penelope Cruz hits the screen in Asghar Farhadi’s new film, Everybody Knows, you just know that if nothing else, we’ll have her beautiful face and petite figure to marvel at for the next two hours. We should be grateful for that for, despite the way Farhadi keeps this colourful thriller moving, in the end it’s his most conventional. Cruz is Laura, the axis around which the shattering events of the next few days will spin. It begins with her returning home to a small village outside Madrid, for her sister’s wedding. Her husband is nowhere to be seen (he stayed behind in Buenos Aires for a job interview) but she has her children with her, her outgoing teenage daughter Irene (Carla Campra) and her young son Diego (Ivan Chavero). The family home is buzzing with activity with everyone dashing here and there, and then into the middle of it walks Paco (Javier Bardem), Laura’s first love and a friend of the family. He now owns and runs a successful vineyard courtesy of a sale by Laura to him many years before and grievances about it still hang in the air.
Soon more guests arrive and the wedding and reception are under way, complete with a drone recording the action from above, a deliciously sinister touch. But, this is a thriller and soon enough, a sense of unease starts to seep into the action. Is it the bride’s cranky old father, a little more disgruntled than usual? The drone? Or perhaps that all of a sudden, after dancing the night away, Irene is suddenly so weary she needs her mother to see her to bed? Some time after when Laura goes to check on her, she’s not there, some time after that, a ransom demand arrives via text, and some time after that, Laura’s husband Alejandro (Ricardo Darin) arrives.
Of course, being a Farhadi film the cracks start to appear and we see that all is not as it seems, or at least we would if this were like A Separation, the director’s brilliant award-winning thriller, or even The Past, his rainswept Paris drama, but in Everybody Knows, the big realisation is heavily hinted at early on. The audience I saw it with, a predominantly Spanish one, collectively drew in their breath when the moment came (a glass was even knocked over) and then came the giggles. It’s a predictable twist but under the hot Spanish sun, Farhadi succeeds by exploiting it for the sheer melodrama. He ups the ante as he always does but it lacks the shattering effect of an accidental miscarriage or a suicide attempt, two events he’s previously used to push his stories to breaking point.
What’s missing here is the ingenious way he hangs tradition and cultural expectation over the characters like a death knell and then daringly moves against the grain in search of a resolution. We walked in to bear winess to a drama and before we know it, our knuckles have turned white. Still, none of this should dissuade you from a viewing. Everybody Knows, a ready made thriller, could happen anywhere, anytime but its delivered by a more relaxed Farhadi, still fascinated by tangled relationships and the secrets his lovers carry. Maybe this is his To Catch A Thief. Fair’s fair, even geniuses take a holiday.
