Category: Foreign

Minari

Rated: PGMinari

Directed and Written by: Isaac Lee Chung

Produced by: Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Christina Oh

Director of Photography: Lachlan Milne

Editor: Harry Yoon

Starring: Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Scott Haze, Yuh-Jung Youn, Will Patton.

Korean with English Subtitles

A ‘Carther Truck’ rental tumbles down a dirt road ahead.

There’re hay rolls in the paddocks.

Black cows.

And the look of concern in the rear-view mirror.

It’s been Jacob’s (Steven Yeun) dream to plant a crop of vegetables traditionally grown in his home country Korea, but here in America.  And finally he’s brought his family to where he sees his dream coming true: pan to a portable house but really a trailer still on it’s wheels in the middle of a paddock.  And the threat of a tornado.

Welcome to Arkansas.

“This just keeps getting better and better,” laments Monica (Yeri Han), Jacob’s wife.

A city girl.

She doesn’t understand why they need to live in the middle of no-where.

But when your job is sexing chicks – the male chicks placed in the blue container, the female in the white, knowing the blue container is for the furnace because the male chicks don’t taste as good or lay eggs – it’s hard for Jacob not to want to make himself useful.  Otherwise he might just end up as smoke in the sky.

Manari is the story of the family trying to make it work.  Making that tree change and making the dream a reality.

The first priority is his family.  But to look after his family, Jacob feels like he needs to achieve something that’s his.

It comes around.

A theme shown in the subtleties – Anne (Noel Kate Cho), the young daughter echoing her mother, “it keeps getting better and better”.

And how fire can mean the end, but also the beginning.

There’re all these bitter-sweet moments, like when Grandma Soonja (Yuh-Jung Youn) comes to stay – but she’s not a real grandmother, says David (Alan Kim).  She swears and doesn’t bake cookies.

But she loves David so much she can laugh, and she can make fun, she smells like home: she finds the perfect place to plant, minari.

It’s in these quiet circles the family drama of Minari is shown with sunlight shining through the long grass, the warmth of Paul (Will Patton), the crazy God loving American who is just so weird but such a gift.

There’s little David with his cowboy boots and stripy socks.

And there’s hardship.  But that just makes those good moments all the more sweet.

Most of the time I was smiling through-out this film, with a rise of emotion here and there, just a little melancholy.  Kinda like taking a walk in the afternoon, with the sun shining behind some cloud cover that gets you feeling the breeze and the moment a bit.  The sun comes out again.  Then you walk home.

Deerskin

Rated: MA15+Deerskin

Directed and Written by: Quentin Dupieux

Photography, Editing: Quentin Dupieux

Art and Set Direction: Joan Le Boru

Sound: Guillaume Le Braz, Alexis Place, Gadou Naudin, Cyril Holtz

Starring: Jean Dujardin, Adele Haenel

French with English subtitles

‘I swear never to wear a jacket as long as I live.’

Deerskin first introduces Georges (Jean Dujardin) wearing a green jacket with three plastic buttons.  He parks on the wrong side of the petrol bowser.  And looking at his reflection in the car window he frowns at what he sees.  Then he flushes the jacket in the public toilet.

Yep, Georges is losing it.

The music flares.

And I think to myself, I already like this movie.

The film is character driven and continues to follow Georges.  But there’s another character in this movie.  A jacket.  We meet the beast.  The new jacket: 100% Deerskin.

The way the film flashes to a live deer in the wilderness seals it somehow.  Just how cool the jacket is.  But It’s not. It’s made from the skin of this beautiful innocent animal (see previous flash to said deer in the wilderness).  And, it’s got… fringes.  But Georges LOVES it: ‘Style de tueur (Killer style),’ he says, looking in the mirror.

It just makes me grin.

After that Georges keeps driving.

‘You’re no-where Georges.  You no longer exist.’  That’s what his ex-wife tells him, over the phone.

Georges ends up in the bar of a small village, where he meets the barmaid, Denise (Adele Haenel).  She’s been burnt by love too.  But Georges is a brand-new man in his deerskin jacket.  He tells Denise he’s a film maker.

It makes sense to say he’s a film maker.  He’s been recording film all day, so it’s kinda the same.  ‘No it’s not,’ says the jacket.

Instead of getting to know an available woman, Georges gets to know the jacket as his relationship with this 100% deerskin jacket becomes the subject of Georges’ movie to be.

Killer style indeed.

Director and writer Quentin Dupieux says, ‘I wanted to film insanity.’

And Georges has lost it.  But wow, he’s really enthusiastic about it.

The way Georges insanity is shown is somehow shocking and hilarious.

It’s the same dark humour used in, The Lobster, but less confronting even though there’s more killing…  And this whole jacket business is just so ticklish.

Jean Dujardin (who plays Georges in the film) explains it’s Quentin’s use of space that creates the comedy, ‘It’s in those moments of hesitation that the comedy and drama blend. You’re right on the borderline. All those scenes, for example, in which Georges demands money, or can’t pay. Quentin takes the time to stretch out the sense of malaise, to allow for some lingering doubt. Is Georges going to turn violent? Weep? Laugh? You never know what will happen. Time stands still for a moment, and those little agonies make me want to die laughing.’

Then there’s Georges dream in life – for him, it’s all about wearing this deerskin jacket.  To be the only person wearing… a jacket.  It doesn’t make sense.  But from the perspective of Georges, as he makes a film about his dream, it kinda does.

The character Denise gets it.  She reckons the jacket is like a shell to protect the wearer from the outside world.

I think it’s because Georges hates who he used to be, wearing that green blazer with the three plastic buttons.

Or perhaps Deerskin is just a weirdo movie that’s put together in a way that somehow makes sense.

Whether you analyse the layers or not, I was thoroughly absorbed and entertained from start to finish.

Like Denise says, ‘I’m into it.’

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Rated: MPortrait of a Lady on Fire

Directed and Written by: Céline Sciamma

Produced by: Bénédicte Couvreur

Starring: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luana Bajrami, Valeria Golino.

Is it the ‘Lady’s’ portrait that is on fire or does the title allude to a portrait of a ‘Lady’ who is on fire? Inscribed within the very title is a hint of the subtleties and ambiguities that characterise this deeply intimate romance, winner of the ‘Best Screenplay’ at the Cannes Film Festival.

And from this point on, the enigmas only proliferate.

In the opening scene, a hand clasping a stick of willow charcoal hesitantly traces a black line across the page while the model/tutor posing in front of the class instructs her students and, at the same time, indirectly urges the viewer to, ‘Take the time to look at me.’

Much in the way that an artist will strive to render three dimensional form on a two dimensional surface, noticing the minutiae of form and the way the model’s limbs and torso are affected by the quirks of perspective and the play of light, so too the viewer is invited into a more intense and quiet world where gesture and symbol take on a deeper meaning and sounds emerging from the stillness— waves slapping against a wooden hull, keys jangling, the scratch of charcoal on paper—take on their own musicality.

It is 1760 and Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is travelling to an isolated chateau perched atop a cliff on the Brittany coast to fulfil a commission. She is to paint a wedding portrait for Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), but the work must remain a secret. Her subject, freshly graduated from life in a convent, is clinging on to her first and last moments of freedom before she is offered up for marriage to an Italian nobleman she has yet to meet, and the only way for Héloïse to resist is to prevent her portrait from coming into existence.

While Héloïse has already forbidden one artist to continue painting her, she doesn’t suspect that her new companion may have her own agenda. Not only is Marianne compelled to work in the few moments of daylight she can snatch away from her time with Héloïse, she must also reassemble Héloïse in her memory from the fragmented glances she manages to steal as the two roam the grasslands surrounding the estate and the rugged shoreline below.

As she works at her task Marianne reflects, ‘One must study the ear, even if it is covered.’ With this observation, Marianne does not simply refer to the way that memory and imagination must work together to reconstruct that which is hidden, or the way the folds and whorls of the ear set up a visual rhythm that recalls its function, she also draws our attention to the ear as a motif, with its form a labyrinth at the entrance to a lightless tunnel.

Like the layers Marianne builds up on her canvas—from the initial cartoon marked out in charcoal, through the abstract daubs of paint where features roughly blocked in glow whitely against the raw umber imprimatura, to that moment when a likeness appears as if from a veil of smoke—that first guarded friendship between the artist and her subject forms its own layers, eventually building into a connection that will draw them both through an emotional and philosophical labyrinth to that lightless tunnel at its heart.

Camille Claudel

Rated: PGCamille Claudel

Directed by: Bruno Nuytten

Produced by: Isabelle Adjani, Bernard Artigues

Starring: Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu, Alain Cuny, Laurent Grévill, Madeleine Robinson.

Restored version

In French with English subtitles 

It is definitely worth a trip to Winsor for a coffee, a croissant and Camille Claudel.

As a part of their Isabelle Adjani retrospective, the 2019 Alliance Française Classic Film Festival is screening  the 1988 classic, which tells the story of Camille Claudel’s tragic romance with the sculptor Auguste Rodin (Gérard Depardieu).

As the film opens, Camille Claudel is out late at night and all alone. The wind howls, snow is falling, and, despite her full-length skirt and bonnet, Claudel is burrowing into a muddy pit, pawing handfuls of wet clay into a suitcase.

What could possibly inspire such single-minded determination? An audition to work as an assistant to Rodin. Yes. Absolutely. But beyond that, Claudel’s aspirations were so improbable that a film about her life had to be based on a true story. Even at the dawn of modernism, Claudel’s chosen art form was unlikely.

Sculpture has always been hideously expensive and working at scale meant long hours of backbreaking toil in freezing barns and stables. Much to her mother’s (Madeleine Robinson) displeasure, Monsieur Claudel (Alain Cuny) shared his daughter’s ambition and was happy to indulge her. Although, in the end, her father’s indulgence may have turned out to be a poison chalice.

Taken on as one assistant among many, Claudel is working high on a scaffold when her attention is drawn toward a nook on the other side of the studio. From her unseen vantage point she can see Rodin running his lips over his model’s naked flesh. His reputation as a seducer of young women would appear to be well-deserved, until the sculptor later uses the same gesture on a marble torso as he tries to feel the life within.

While kissing the sculptures is generally discouraged in galleries and museums, hewing form from rock is intense and physical, and the film beautifully alludes to the sculptor’s desire to caress the rock, to sensuously experience that moment when the curve of ankle or the bow of a lip first emerges from its casing.

In the role of Claudel’s mentor, Rodin offers keen insights into the nature of sculpture and subtly evokes its poetry, ‘The accident of what is left is a complete emotion,’ but Rodin was years behind in fulfilling his commissions and struggling for inspiration when the affair began. As his muse, his model, his lover and his artistic collaborator, Claudel was the focus of Rodin’s admiration and her name was becoming established at the epicentre of Parisian art, so it must have seemed inconceivable that it would all come apart.

When the unthinkable did happen, Claudel denounced Rodin as the arch-villain who destroyed her. She blamed him for everything from stealing her commissions to undermining her reputation and blighting her exhibitions. She even claimed that Rodin was somehow responsible for the river Seine when her studio flooded.

But there was another less obvious figure involved in Claudel’s downfall. While Claudel was conducting her affairs in the limelight, her younger brother (Laurent Grévill) had been pursuing a successful diplomatic career and quietly gaining recognition as a poet. Ever available and obliging, Paul Claudel was Camille’s closest ally; that is, until he came into his inheritance.

A singular woman in a world conducted by men with agendas, the story of Camille Claudel might not be quite as it appears.

Pain and Glory (Dolor Y Gloria)

Rated: MA15+Pain and Glory

Written and Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar

Produced by: Agustín Almodóvar

Executive Producer: Esther García

Original score: Alberto Iglesias

Director of photography: José Luis Alcaine

Starring: Antonio Banderas, Asier Etxeandia, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Nora Navas, Julieta Serrano, César Vicente, Asier Flores, Penélope Cruz.

Spanish with English subtitles.

‘If you don’t write or film, what do you do?’

‘Live, I guess.’

Pain and Glory is a drama, a life story shown in monologue and intimate conversation.

Salvador Mallo’s (Antonio Banderas) life is filled with patterns and colours, water and tiles, suspension and scars.

The story of the film circles his life as he remembers teaching a young builder to read and write when he was growing up in the catacombs with his mother, as he remembers his career writing and making films and the past disagreements with friend and actor, Alberto (Asier Etxeandia) whom he hasn’t seen since the premiere of his most successful film thirty-two years ago.

He remembers as the pain of his ailments take pieces from him, his back pain, his migraines, his choking – he can’t create anymore, but he can remember.

This is a film that bleeds the present and the past so the trigger of smoking heroin with the man described, ‘You’re the opposite side of that text,’ Salvador falls, taking him back to the time when he experienced his first desire, his first love, the escape from the ‘bad ring’ of Madrid, to get away from the temptations of addiction to Havana and the Ivory Coast.

But sometimes, love isn’t enough.

He has no regrets.  To recover from his past, he writes the story.

So the past and present are intertwined like his writing translated into this film.

Director and writer, Pedro Almodóvar has taken pieces from his own life, translating them into the film like the character Salvador makes films about his past.

The hair, the setting of the apartment the same as the man himself, Pedro.

Antonio Banderas has just won the Cannes 2019 Best Actor Award (the film selected to compete for the Palme d’Or) for his performance here.  And I can see why.  He just seems to get better with age.  His humble sincerity a warmth felt through the screen.  He’s endearing.

And there’s more to the film than a character study as the scenes cut from the bright sun shining through the exposed roof of the catacomb house, to the animation of red broken lines like the branches of a tree exploding in the drawn lines of a brain, a contrast to the quiet suffering of a man embarrassed of his pain, refusing to allow his housekeeper to tie his laces, wearing loafers, catching taxis, lying in the dark.

But there are no complaints as he loses himself in memory.

This isn’t a sad film, more a poignant tale of all the darkness and light in life – sad and happy and true.

The overriding feeling I got from this film was grateful: life can be cruel, but it can also be kind.

Bangla

Rated: MBangla

Directed by: Phaim Bhuiyan

Screenplay by: Phaim Bhuiyan, Picciarelli Vanessa

Produced by: Domenico Procacci, Annamaria Morelli

Starring: Carlotta Antonelli, Phaim Bhuiyan, Nasima Akhter

Winner of the Nastro d’Argento for Best Comedy 2019

Winner of Best First Feature, Golden Globes Italy, 2019

Italian and Bengali with English subtitles

The national language, Bengali, is the only official language of Bangladesh according to the third article of the Constitution of Bangladesh.

Phaim (Phaim Bhuiyan) is a twenty-two-year old born in Italy but his parents are still expecting him to behave like a Bangledeshi Muslim meaning: no pork, no alcohol and no sex before marriage.

So while perving at underwear adverts and trying not to look but really looking at a couple pashing on the bus, all he can do is ask, how much punishment is he in for by just thinking about getting it on before marriage?

When he meets the wild and beautiful blue-haired Asia (Carlotta Antonelli), what’s he supposed to do when kissing Asia feels like a compulsion?  Like resisting is fighting against gravity?

Yeah, OK, sounds a bit familiar, the culture clash and expected romance…But director and star, Phaim Bhuiyan has gotten the tone just right with this Italian rom-com.

Rather than dwelling on the obvious, Bangla is more about the conversations Phaim has with himself and the camera.

We also get funny moments as the film addresses Phaim living in Rome in the multiethnic Torpignattara neighbourhood, as he works as a museum steward and playing in a band.  The band, of course, playing Bangledeshi favourites.

When discussing the idea of going out with an Italian girl, his mate tells him, ‘Italian girls smell like pork.’

But in the end that feeling Phaim has means, ‘You’re in love.’

‘Cool.’

The straight-forward dialogue of Phaim and Asia when they first meet is classic.

The back-and-forth and instant connection between the two transends the two cultures because of its simplicity.

And it’s sweet seeing the two, arm-in-arm, Phaim edging away until hitting a tree because no matter how attracted he is to this Italian girl, he can’t do anything about it.

But she tries.  While he tries not to.  It works.

And the tone of the film has a lot to do with not just the writing but the spot-on editing and cut from shot to scene with Phiam firmly in control of the film without being selfish with it.

I liked it.  More than I thought I would.

More cool and sweet than romantic and funny – a classic Italian film for release as part of the Lavazza Italian Film Festival 2019.

#ItalianFF

A White, White Day (Hvítur, Hvítur Dagur)

Rated: MA White, White Day (Hvítur, Hvítur Dagur)

Written and Directed by: Hlynur Pálmason

Produced by: Anton Máni Svansson

Music by: Edmund Finnis

Cinematography by: Maria von Hausswolff

Film Editing by: Julius Krebs Damsbo

Starring: Ingvar E. Sigurdsson, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir, Hilmir Snær Guðnason.

WINNER

Best Actor, Cannes International Film Festival 2019 (Critics’ Week)

WINNER

Best Actor, 2019 Transilvania International Film Festival

Opening the Scandinavian Film Festival, A White, White Day (Hvítur, Hvítur Dagur) is a slow, bold and at times beautiful film, the outstanding performance from Ingvar E. Sigurdsson the centre piece to the background of Icelandic scenery.

I was drawn into the landscape of this film, the interest of change while the centre remains the same; the boldness and cheek of a granddaughter, the roar of a monster – it’s a film about grief but shown in images and movement and stillness, showing the process of grief rather than the narrative.

Time is shown as frame, by frame, an old farm house remains static, as each frame shows wind, snow, wild horses, a full moon at night, to daylight and green grass, and eventually, former police chief and grandfather, Ingimundur (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson) arriving with granddaughter, Salka (Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir).

They wander around the old house, turning on taps, finding one of the horses in the kitchen.  Laughing together, the scene shows the relationship between grandfather and granddaughter; the natural companionship and exchange between them, the love.

Slowly, we realise that Ingimundur’s wife has died.  He’s a widow.  He used to be a cop.  We see a counsellor ask him not to be so hard on himself.  Not to self-criticise.

To ask: ‘What would be a perfect day?’

We receive no answer, the film cutting to Ingimundur in a rowboat with his granddaughter after they’ve caught a fish.

The editing (Julius Krebs Damsbo) sets the tone of the film, the story shown through image and object to depict the way a retired police chief’s mind works: Ingmiundur plays soccer in his purple boxes with the sea slowly rippling in the background.

He’s found out his wife was unfaithful.  He didn’t know while she was alive. Now, he has questions.

The sea churns.

The film’s a mysterious family drama that revolves around the quiet strength of this man, Ingimundur, who loses his grip as he investigates the infidelity of his beloved wife.  But instead of revenge, his quiet anger shows the depth of this love.

And the mystery of his love is set in the strangeness of fog and snow, as he tells scary tales to his granddaughter, while he quietly grieves.

I was absorbed into that quiet and open feeling like a strange day can create – that’s why the film’s title is, A White, White Day – where the sky and land are both white so they blend, allowing the dead to speak.

Parasite

Rated: MA15+Parasite

Directed by: Bong Joon-Ho

Story by: Bong Joon Ho

Screenplay by: Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Won

Produced by: Kwak Sin Ae, Moon Yang Kwon

Executive Producer: Miky Lee

Starring: SONG Kang Ho, LEE Sun Kyun, CHO Yeo Jeong, CHOI Woo Shik, PARK So Dam, CHANG Hyae Jin, JUNG ZISO, JUNG Hyeon Jun, LEE Jung Eun.

Winner d’Or Cannes Film Festival

Official Competition Sydney Film Festival

Director and writer Bong Joon-Ho describes Parasite as, ‘a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains.’

And Joon-Ho has certainly captured a film with a difference here, where the story starts off one way, then evolves into something else so the film’s like a journey into a way of thinking or a thought that creeps up.

Parasite starts off about a struggling family, living in a sub-basement where they contemplate putting up a sign, ‘No urinating’ because of the drunk that is forever pissing outside their window.

The father, Ki-Taek (Song, Kang Ho) has no job after several failed business ventures; the mother, Chung-Sook (Chang Hyae Jin) is a former national medallist in the hammer throw who keeps house as best she can amongst the stink beetles and cardboard pizza boxes the family assemble to at least have some money coming in.

Getting cut-off from the wi-fi because the neighbour has changed their password, son, Ki-Woo (Choi Woo Shik) and daughter, Ki-Jung (Park So Dam) wave their phones around, trying to find a connection, waving past a fan cover with socks hanging, eventually finding connection up on the raised toilet.

It’s desperate times, but the family struggles together.

Until Ki-Woo gets an opportunity to tutor a rich kid.

Posing as a college graduate, Ki-Woo burrows into the life of the Park family, also a family of four, with Mr. Park (Lee Sun Kyun) CEO of a global IT firm and young wife Yeon-Kyo (Cho Yeo Jeong) who stays at home with their two young children.

Ki-Woo plans and manipulates this rich family to keep his family together – to get them jobs as well, despite the fact all the positions are already filled.  And it’s easy.  The family are so nice.  But they can be nice.  They’re rich.

There’s so much more to this film than the concept of the haves and have-nots.  Yet, this is the central idea shown with symbolism like flood water running down steps – from the beauty and green grass and clean lines of a house built by an architect to catch the sun, running down to the squalor of the streets below, flooded with raw sewage.

There’s a line – Mr. Park even stating, ‘I can’t stand people who cross the line’ – and as the film progresses the more stark the difference between those above and those below.

I can see why this film is winning awards.  There’s so much thought and layering in the story, carefully unveiled.

From light humour capturing how families are, to the horror of a class divide that keeps getting deeper shown with the revelation of ignorance and the fight to protect family; the individual fights against circumstance until the eventual learned behaviour: with no plan, nothing can go wrong.

The portrayal of what feels like a true-to-life tragedy is made to feel authentic because of the lightness and brevity of the family on the edge of starvation; the desperation turning relatable, intelligent people into something else.

Like the film is saying: it’s not like people who are desperate don’t know they’re desperate.

So there’s more than the class divide growing wider and the actions the desperate make trying to survive, there’s self-reflection.

The Realm (El Reino)

Rated: MThe Realm

Directed by: Rodrigo Sorogoyen

Written by: Isabel Peña, Rodrigo Sorogoyen

Produced by: Gerardo Herrero, Mikel Lejarza, Mercedes Gamero

Starring: Antonio De La Torre, Mónica López, José María Pou, Nacho Fresneda, Ana Wagener, Bárbara Lennie, Luis Zahera, Francisco Reyes, María De Nati, Paco Revilla, Sonia Almarcha, David Lorente, Andrés Lima and Oscar De La Fuente.

Spanish with English subtitles

A fast-paced political thriller, The Realm follows Manuel López Vidal (Antonio De La Torre), a Party member who’s just been given the nod to become the next Party leader.

But when a fellow member becomes embroiled in allegations of corruption, the stain spreads as ‘Operation Amadeus’ uncovers the depth of corruption, including Manuel.  Not only is his position under threat but his freedom and even his life.

There’s a lot going on in this film: the layers of character, relationships and Spanish politics.

The dialogue is non-stop with a soundtrack of techno beats as we follow the Party members with hand-held cameras to keep the pace sprinting.  We follow behind Manuel, we follow him into the backseat of a car as the door closes, we see footage from an iPhone showing the Party members living The Life on the sunny deck of a boat as it speeds along the blue waters of their obvious success.

We see Manuel as he fights for his life, using everything he’s got.

The film slows down momentarily when Manuel meets with political journalist, Amaia Marín (Bárbara Lennie), making yet another deal, asking for her patience – they clink their glasses, ‘To patience’.

And there’s the patriarchal figure of the Party and regional head, José Luis Frías (José María Pou) who tries to give pause to the madness of politician trying to out-smart the other: when there’s silence, when a look is not returned, there’s a reason more important than one’s curiosity.

There are many characters, all trying to survive – the film washes over the depth of the many, focussing more on the individual, Manuel, on his intelligence, his family, his cunning.

The Realm shows the underbelly of Spanish politics, shining the light on those entrenched in back-hand dealings made in a government where corruption is the norm; where power protects power.

It took me a while to get absorbed into the pace of the film, to figure out exactly what was going on in the story or where the film was headed.  But the confusion and complication are all part of the intrigue – there’s more to this film than a cerebral political thriller, like there’s more to politics than the game-playing of corrupt politicians.

Everybody Knows (Todos Lo Saben)

Rated: MEverybody Knows

Directed and Written by: Asghar Farhadi

Sound: Daniel Fontrodona, Gabriel Gutiérrez, Bruno Tarrière

Composer: Javier Limón

Produced by: Alexandre Mallet-Guy and Álvaro Longoria

Starring: Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Ricardo Darín, Carla Campra.

Even as it delves deeply into the convoluted ties of love that bind a family and a community, and the underlying tensions roiling beneath the surface, this film is above all a taut psychological drama and an exquisite slow burn mystery.

‘Laura is a woman with a secret, and suddenly she finds herself faced with a crisis,’ says Penelope Cruz of her character.

Laura has returned to a small village in her native Spain to attend her sister’s nuptials, bringing with her Diego, her young  son, and Irene (Carla Campra), her beautiful but wild sixteen year old daughter, while her husband remains in Buenos Aires to attend to business. Before their car even reaches its destination, Irene sets the village boys agog and she is soon hooning around the countryside on a trail bike with a smitten local boy in tow. Laura’s extended family is a jovial, rumbustious and permissive clan, at once completely modern but with an abiding sense of its long history and changing fortunes.

When Irene falls asleep in the middle of the wedding festivities it is initially put down to the effects of jetlag and mischief, since she has been sneaking cigarettes and illicit sips of wine all evening. It is only when Laura finally turns in for the night that she discovers that Irene’s bed is empty. In her daughter’s place is an ominous pile of newspaper clippings about a long ago abduction where the lifeless body of the victim was pulled from a well.

One of the criticisms often levelled at mysteries and thrillers is that character development is sacrificed at the expense of plot. Not in this case. According to screenwriting lore, the deep truths at the heart of a character are only revealed under duress, and here the pressure is tremendous as the moral dilemmas multiply and the thumbscrews tighten.

Fifteen years on from the time Iranian director Asghar Farhadi originally conceived the idea, Everybody Knows has been lovingly produced. The subtitles are effortless to read and the sound design subtly underpins the drama. As Laura and her former lover Paco (Javier Bardem) set out in an unseasonal downpour to search for the missing girl, the wipers in Paco’s four wheel drive beat a heavy tattoo echoing the thrumming rain and the collective heartbeat of occupants.

The cinematography and mise-en-scène have also been skilfully designed, with the outer landscape closely mirroring the inner. Lush greens and the golden hues of early summer give way to autumn’s stubble and dust, while the graceful sandstone buildings of the plaza cede to the crumbling ruins that dot the surrounding countryside. Paco in particular is closely identified with the land through his cherished vineyard, and his transformation over the course of the ordeal is remarkable. Indeed, the entire cast have turned in compelling performances.

While this film is a beautifully nuanced portrait of characters under extraordinary pressure, it is also a tightly scripted mystery, where the boisterous and joyful wedding party gradually comes to learn that the perpetrators must be from among them: ‘Watch everyone you know, carefully.’

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