Chatham, N.Y. — We all know that secrets can be very corrosive. Asghar Farhadi, the great Iranian writer-director, shows them to be thrilling and provocative in “Everybody Knows,” which recently played at the FilmColumbia festival. This film opened the Cannes Film Festival this year with great expectations. Farhadi won two Best Foreign Film Academy Awards for “A Separation” (2012) and “The Salesman” (2017). (As an aside, he refused to attend the 2017 Academy Awards due to the executive order of President Trump barring Iranians temporary entry to the United States.) In his first film set in Spain (fun fact: he doesn’t speak any Spanish and required translators), he continues to provoke and examine his usual themes of class and gender struggles.
The movie has an exemplary cast, including husband and wife Academy Award winners Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz as well as the gifted Ricardo Darin (an Argentinian actor who starred in the amazing “Wild Tales” in 2014). Laura (Cruz) has just arrived at her Spanish hometown from Argentina with her children for her younger sister’s wedding. The joy and love upon her arrival is palpable with her large extended family. She has left her husband, Alejandro, (Darin) at home, which creates some notice among the locals. And adding to the gossip, her rebellious teenage daughter, Irene (Carla Campra), discovers that her mother and a local vintner, Paco (Bardem), were once lovers.
The audience is enticed at first by the lush scenery and the festive wedding reception filled with joyous dancing. Even with a rain storm and electrical outage, the mood is upbeat. Paco manages to fix this problem and the wedding party continues. However, things change ominously when Laura discovers her daughter has been kidnapped. Everyone is a suspect, including the delinquents who filmed it, the farmhands who work for Paco and all the family members. All the past issues and heartaches are brought to the surface as the texts from the kidnappers ask for a huge ransom with impending threats. Laura is in turmoil and begs her husband to fly to Spain to help her find their daughter. Cruz is a tour de force in her grief and desperation to find her daughter.
However, things are not as they seem. The once wealthy Alejandro is now penniless and Laura has to ask her old lover for help. The generous Paco offers to sell his estate to rescue Laura’s daughter but Alejandro wants to leave it to God’s good graces. The suspicions and mounting tensions that erupt with this kidnapping corrodes this once-happy family. The director plays upon the theme of how our past behavior has a strong influence on the present. There is a beautifully wrought conversation between Laura and Paco that changes the course of everyone’s lives; the melancholy evoked by what could have been is unmistakable. Apparently their secrets will eventually be exposed and, in this case, it is life-changing.
The luscious countryside outside of Madrid was gorgeously filmed by Jose Luis Alcaine (Pedro Almodovar’s regular cinematographer) and contributes to the moodiness of the film. This is indeed a thriller but one with a strong exploration into the souls of the three main characters. It is a mystery but also a meditation on past secrets and the difficulty of really knowing people.
