Classy Spanish mystery, but something’s lost in translation
Everybody Knows (12A) Verdict: But not everyone believes ★★★II
THE heavyweight husband-and-wife duo of Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem star in this Spanish-language film by acclaimed Iranian director Asghar Farhadi.
Those are three names that ought to make it worth watching. Farhadi has twice won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, while Cruz and Bardem are always compelling performers on the big screen.
Unfortunately, Everybody Knows adds up to less than the sum of its extremely promising parts. It’s beautifully acted, but at the heart of the story is a kidnapping that never quite seems believable.
Cruz plays Laura, a middle-aged mother of two returning with her children to attend a family wedding in the small Spanish town in which she grew up. She lives in Latin America now, but her husband Alejandro (the great Argentinian actor Ricardo Darin) has stayed at home for work reasons.
He’s not greatly missed, for reasons which become clearer as the story progresses. Besides, for the first time in a while, Laura is back in the bosom of her beloved extended family.
She’s even happy to see the former lover she jilted. This is Paco (Bardem), who now has a pretty wife and a halfshare in a thriving vineyard, so he’s content, too.
Farhadi makes us wait to find out how the collective happiness collapses. The film’s first act is the lead-up to the nuptials and then the event itself, followed by a party of such rhapsodic joy that you sit there wondering how you can get yourself invited to a small-town Spanish wedding.
It looks such fun. But, of course, all this is designed to make the balloon of jollity pop even more loudly.
During the party, someone steals into the house and abducts Laura’s teenage daughter Irene (Carla Campra), who has apparently conked out after drinking too much.
She is quite a handful, so there’s every chance she might have cooked this up herself. But then a sinister ransom note arrives, and Laura goes into emotional meltdown.
The rest of the film unfolds as a slightly unwieldy mix of kidnapping thriller and domestic melodrama, as the family’s secrets, lies and grievances begin to crystallise, although small-town gossip is such that everybody knows them already — hence the title.
For the audience, there are too many ‘hang on — that wouldn’t happen in real life’ moments to make Everybody Knows really work. But there are lots of pleasures in it, too — not least, seeing Cruz and Bardem at full throttle.