Cinema: Everyone knows it, the thriller of the Bardem-Cruz couple

Author's judgement: 

Sorry for the delay. We would have liked to write earlier about this week's film, but, unfortunately, we were overwhelmed by the curiosity to see the work of Virzi and we regretted it. It's about Everybody knows, directed by Iranian Asghar Farhadi as director and screenwriter, with Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem as the main protagonists, released a few days ago in Italian cinemas.  

The story tells of Laura's return to Spain, to her hometown of vineyards and tractors, on the occasion of her sister's wedding. During the celebrations, the teenage daughter disappears and, from that moment, the drama that involves the whole community begins. The kidnappers impose silence with the police, on pain of death threat for the kidnapped. To take care of the investigation firsthand is Paco that, in order to save the little girl, he is willing to do anything, even to sell his assets to find the money. But the drama explodes within the family where suspicions and grudges never completely set aside. The investigations, conducted with the help of a former policeman, grope in the dark until in the folds of what is said and not said, of those who know and pretend not to know, at a certain point the truth emerges in all its brutality.  

At the center of the whole plot is the family, just to touch on a new topic. In Italy we know something about it and we have important titles in our video library: A perfect family by Paolo Genovese, The family by Ettore Scola, Relatives snakes by Mario Monicelli just to name a few from a long list. It is not at all surprising that, once again, it is within it that one must seek out and often one finds all the good and all the bad in the world. The screenwriters have a good time embroidering plots, digging through the memories of a never forgotten past, between broken promises and wrong loves. A title easily comes to mind that could well sum up the essence of this story: secrets and lies, as perhaps there are plenty of them in the small worlds of families. If a misdeed, a criminal act is added to all this, which we can easily assume belongs to most human beings, the game is done and only the director's wisdom and ability to turn everything into a good cinematic product remains. 

The film would like to be a detective story and, in many respects, it succeeds as long as it mirrors the classic pattern: one crime, many suspects, one culprit. It is less successful when the tone of tension does not rise, when everything flows around a slow tempo, almost parallel to that of the countryside surrounding the town where the kidnapping takes place. The narrative rhythms are suggestive, as are the acting skills of the characters: convincing, perfectly suited to the role. Everything runs smoothly in a captivating but not overwhelming atmosphere. It almost seems that, from one moment to the next, a twist should take place which instead, when it happens, reveals itself as a simple scene passage. Like all stories of this kind, it is well known that the culprit appears immediately on stage, albeit in disguise. In this case it is very well camouflaged and it is not easy to suspect who it could be. A mid-season movie, you can see.