USA TODAY International Edition
Cruz and Bardem, together again
CANNES, France – Everyone knows opening nights are a mixed bag.
It’s a long-held norm at not just the Cannes Film Festival, which held its glittering opening-night gala seaside. In Toronto, playing opening night is a risk. Snowy Sundance is dicey, too.
Tuesday evening, director Asghar Farhadi’s Spanish-language drama Everybody Knows took center stage at the Palais des Festivals, with stars Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz in the spotlight. Everybody Knows marks the couple’s latest movie together, after 1992’s Jamón, Jamón (filmed before they were together), 2008’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona and their upcoming Loving Pablo (in theaters June 15), about drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Working together is “not something we plan on doing every two years,” Cruz said at a news conference Wednesday. “It will be once in a while if we feel it is right, as in this case.”
Asked whether she was paid the same as Bardem for Everybody Knows, Cruz replied with a hint of mirth: “Actually, yes.”
Farhadi, an acclaimed Iranian director, earned worldwide attention last year for boycotting the Oscars during President Trump’s travel ban. (His acclaimed film The Salesman went on to win best foreign film.)
On Wednesday, Farhadi took a moment to address the absence of fellow Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, whose Three Faces also is screening in competition at Cannes.
Panahi was banned from leaving Iran for 20 years after being found guilty by authorities of committing “propaganda against the Islamic Republic.”
“I spoke to him yesterday,” Farhadi said. “I have great respect for his work and continue to hope he will be able to come.” He called it “a very strange feeling for me to be able to be here, whereas he cannot be here. This is something I have difficulty living with. It’s wonderful that he’s continued his work in the face of such adversity.”
For Everybody Knows, billed as a psychological thriller, Farhadi moved to Spain for two years and absorbed the culture “like a sponge,” Cruz said. “He had a Spanish teacher every day with him,” she said. “He didn’t take this lightly, the fact that he was coming to another country, working in another language and in another culture.” The film stars Bardem as a vintner whose old flame, Laura (Cruz), returns from Argentina to her Spanish hometown with her children for a family wedding. Joy turns to terror as secrets are unspooled and a kidnapping takes place. Everybody Knows was treated to a five-minute standing ovation after the credits rolled, with many citing strong performances from its leads.
But the film itself left critics mixed.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Boyd van Hoeij called Everybody Knows “an odd, somewhat underwhelming hybrid that’s part talky thriller, part family drama.”
“Farhadi’s weakest film yet is still better than the vast majority of commercially made dramas in Spain, France or the United States,” wrote Variety critic Peter Debruge.
But The Wrap’s Steve Pond strongly disagreed, calling Everybody Knows
“the most substantial film to open a Cannes Film Festival in years.”
By Wednesday morning, all that chatter equaled a victory for Farhadi: Focus Features snapped up the film, ensuring Everybody Knows will be released stateside.