Todos lo saben (Ashgar Farhadi, 2018)

Iranian prodigy Farhadi moves into directing in Spanish, with mixed results. In Everybody Knows, a family gathers to celebrate a wedding in a small town, which turns sour as the daughter of the sister of the bride is kidnapped in the middle of the festivities, and the family are left helpless to do anything without any clues and a warning that going to the police will result in the daughter's death. The film relies strongly on the chemistry between real-life couple Penélope Cruz as the distraught mother and Javier Bardem as her first love from decades before, but the problem is that she's given little to do besides cry, while his role has more meat on it as he sets out to try to track down the kidnappers. Farhadi makes use of his trademark non-disclosure of information at a critical juncture, and this works, and there's also the mature complexity in the interrelationships that we've come to expect of the director. In other words, there are plenty of things to ponder and reward the viewer's patience, but it's more disjointed than his previous works.

6/10