A potboiler from a master of tension
Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi spins serious yarns of doubt and tension. With his new film Everybody
Knows, set in Spain, he’s got a kidnapping whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie — although it wouldn’t rank as one of Christie’s finest teases, or Farhadi’s.
Real-life married couple Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem agreeably co-star, as they have in many other films, but this is an ensemble divertissement, chosen to open last year’s Cannes Film Festival. This is also the most mainstream movie yet for writer/director Farhadi, who has twice won the Oscar for best foreign language film, for A Separation and The Salesman.
Everybody Knows begins like a rom-com: a wedding in a small village has reunited members of a far-flung family. There are squeals of recognition, warm embraces and happy chatter, all bathed in the golden light of Jose Luis Alcaine’s cinematography. But the clock in the village bell tower ticks ominously — shades of the tower in Hitchcock’s Vertigo — suggesting that time is running out for joyful concerns.
The wedding will reopen old disputes about land claims, personal loyalties and matters of the heart. Then the lights go out, someone goes missing, and simmering tensions go on the boil. Cruz plays Laura, who has flown home from her adopted country, Argentina, leaving behind her husband, Alejandro (Ricardo Darin), who has work to attend to. But Laura has brought their two children: a teen daughter, Irene (Carla Campra), and younger son Diego, (Ivan Chavero). The bride is Laura’s younger sister, Ana (Inma Cuesta).
During the wedding festivities, restless Irene flirts with studly local youth Felipe (Sergio Castellanos). He tells her something that sounds like a secret, but which he insists “everybody knows”: her mother was once in love with wealthy local vineyard owner Paco (Bardem), a smiling man possessed of more charm than his scruffy hair and casual attire might suggest.
Laura broke Paco’s heart when she married Alejandro and moved away. Paco remained in the village, bought land for his vineyards from Laura’s father (Ramón Barea), married a quiet schoolteacher (Barbara Lennie), and quietly made an excellent living for himself and his family.
Does Paco still carry a torch for Laura? This is one of many mysteries big and small dangled by Farhadi, who ratchets up suspense as methodically as that infernal ticking bell tower.
There is also some unfinished business regarding how Paco obtained the land for his vineyards, a transaction he deems a negotiation while others view it as exploitation.
These squabbles pale in significance when the lights go out and a key figure vanishes. A ransom note later arrives by text: pay 300,000 euros and don’t go to the cops, or you’ll never see your loved one again.
This “B” movie turn may be more alarming to fans of Farhadi than it is to the people on screen. We are accustomed to more thoughtful unveilings of human acts and impulses than what we get from Everybody Knows, which lards in multiple plot twists, perhaps in the desire to give everybody in the large cast something to do.
But if this is a “B” Asghar Farhadi film, it’s still better than the “A” efforts of many other filmmakers.