Directed by: Asghar Farhadi
Starring: Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darín
Rated R, 133 minutes
The Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi’s best-known film to date is still 2011’s “A Separation,” which remains a textbook example of how to write a compelling drama. The story of a married couple deciding between immigrating to America and staying in Iran to care for the husband’s ailing father, “A Separation” doesn’t frame any of its characters as heroes or enemies, suggesting instead that everyone is just trying their best. The difficulty of it is that the characters want mutually exclusive things; the tragedy is that it tears them apart.
Farhadi hasn’t changed his cinematic style much since then, but with his latest work, the Spanish-language drama “Everybody Knows,” he finds himself working for the first time with internationally recognized movie stars. Here, Penélope Cruz (“Volver”) plays Laura, who returns to her native Spain for her sister’s wedding, where she reconnects with her childhood sweetheart, Paco (Javier Bardem, “No Country for Old Men”). Everybody in Laura’s small hometown knows that Laura and Paco were in love once upon a time, which leads to gossip: why has Laura’s husband, Alejandro (Ricardo Darín, “The Secret in Their Eyes”), not come along for the wedding?
The tension escalates rapidly when Laura’s daughter disappears in the middle of the night. At first, Laura suspects that her daughter, an impulsive teenager, may have run off, but then Laura begins getting threatening text messages from people who claim to have taken the girl. Not knowing what to do, and so far away from her husband, she turns to Paco for help. For his part, Paco eagerly jumps into action to save Laura’s daughter, but this only leads to more gossip among Laura’s family; why is Paco so willing to help? Is he still bitter that Laura left him, all those years ago? And why does Laura wait to tell her husband?
The power of “Everybody Knows” lies in its simplicity. Every character’s motives and suspicions are laid out early; Farhadi then takes his time unspooling each thread, one by one. And if the movie is sometimes heavy-handed with its exposition, it makes up for its lack of subtlety by diving deeply into every conflict it raises. The secrets that come out over the course of the movie are not intended as surprises, but as fuel to the slow-burning fire that is the conflict between Laura, her family, her husband, and Paco. And once these secrets are out—secrets that Laura has kept from Paco, that Paco has kept from his own wife, that Alejandro and Laura have kept from her family—there is no returning to the tenuous peace that these secrets afforded them all. The immediate challenge is to find Laura’s daughter and save her life, but the film leaves the characters to grapple with the consequences of everything they learn along the way.
All this is interesting and impressive, and solidifies Farhadi’s reputation as one of the 21st century’s most important filmmakers, but the most curious (and even distracting) thing about “Everybody Knows” is that the leads, Cruz and Bardem, are married in real life. This isn’t just a case of two talented actors taking on dramatic, complicated roles, but also a married couple exorcising a host of hypothetical demons before an audience of strangers. Laura breaks Paco’s heart, over and over; Paco’s willingness to help Laura is exhausting for her. The biggest open secret of the film is that they are clearly in love, and yet unable to give each other what they need.
Cruz and Bardem are self-effacing, though, when it comes to the suggested connection between the movie and their real lives. Their presence on-screen together is not some performance of infatuation, like that of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in movies like “Cleopatra,” nor is it akin to the harrowing fallout between those same two actors in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Cruz and Bardem are a power couple for an era that has grown tired of tabloidisms, a pair of actors who are graceful and honest in their work. Farhadi understands this, which is why “Everybody Knows” works. The movie boasts many strengths, but Farhadi’s ability to drain the celebrity out of his stars, to make them vessels for something new despite what everybody already knows about them, is its greatest triumph.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 3/22/19.