Review: "Everybody Knows"

What a strange thing it is to see a bride and groom launching their lives together and not smile. Yet here is an entire village, gazing upon wedded bliss and offering little but blank faces -- a few scowls, even.

That's an early scene in "Everybody Knows," a family drama/thriller set in a provincial town outside Madrid. Penelope Cruz plays Laura, who left her home decades ago to marry and live in Argentina. Javier Bardem is Paco, her old flame who now runs a vineyard on land her family used to own.

Laura's sister (Inma Cuesta) holds her wedding in the village church, the sort of idyllic scene we've glimpsed in a thousand movies -- the couple having rice thrown at them, everybody crying and cheering, a spectacle of pure joy. Yet writer/director Asghar Farhadi points his camera away to the townsfolk, who are not happy to witness this.

Ostensibly the story is about a kidnapping as Laura's teen daughter, Irene (Carla Campra), disappears from her bed after the reception. But really the film is about the tension rife within this seemingly idyllic place -- the secrets, the resentments, the hidden motivations that everyone seems to bear.

Farhadi ("The Salesman") uses the crime as the springboard to an exploration of this family and community. It's the sort of place where people embrace life exuberantly, drinking and dancing in abandon. Yet there's layer upon layer of rot underneath, and all it takes is one event like this to expose the maggot-infested core.

Allies become suspects, the truth is twisted and leveraged, and eventually we reach a point of total paranoia. Virtually any character in the story could be behind the kidnapping.

There is much curiosity about the absence of Laura's husband, Alejandro (Ricardo Darín), who stayed behind for work. He is known as a well-to-do businessman who made a sizeable donation to the church for repairs some years back. The local priest actually pauses the wedding ceremony to praise his generosity -- while musing if there couldn't be more forthcoming.

It seems this sentiment is decidedly non-secular, too.

The patriarch of the clan was once virtually the lord of this village, but he lost his riches due to drink and gambling, yet still thinks everyone should defer to him. Laura's older sister and her husband are very involved in the search, but they run a hotel that's barely paying enough to cover the loan. The list goes on.

The brother-in-law brings in a retired police detective friend to help, and soon fingers are being pointed all around.

Paco appears very happy with his wife, Bea (Bárbara Lennie), yet it seems clear to everyone that there's still something between he and Laura. When Alejandro finally shows up, his behavior creates new presumptions while dashing existing ones.

This is a very smart film, yet we never feel like we're being played for suckers. Farhadi nudges us rather than manipulates. The movie seems less interested in resolving what happens to Irene than seeing how her disappearance causes all the adults to reexamine the comfortable lives they've fallen into.

Gripping and yet very human, "Everybody Knows" is a whodunit that cares more about the how and why.

Review: "The Salesman"

"The Salesman" was hardly my favorite foreign language film last year, or even the best of the five nominated for the Academy Award, though its win seemed preordained. Iranian writer/director Asghar Farhadi had a film win the Oscar a few years ago, and once you've won one it's much easier to get nominated again, and win again. 

But given the political climate, the Academy couldn't resist the temptation to send a message by giving the statuette to an Iranian filmmaker -- especially one who'd loudly and publicly announced that he'd be boycotting the ceremony. He sent a representative (a female astronaut, no less!) to accept in his place.

I didn't like "Salesman" as much as his other Oscar-winning film, "A Separation," though both are about a husband and wife carefully negotiating cultural expectations for marriage in a modern Iranian theocracy. Neither explicitly attacks the system of Islamic laws, but takes pains to show how women -- and men -- can feel constrained by expectations upon them.

Taraneh Alidoosti and Shahab Hosseini play Rana and Emad Etesami, a married couple in perhaps their middle to late thirties. He's a teacher who is also starring and directing a production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," in which his wife is the female lead.  They're childless, and thus stand out from a society that cherishes family.

Despite the title, the movie's not about the play, though there are similar themes about a common man yearning for respect and validation.

The dramaturgy kicks off when they move into a new apartment after their old one was damaged by some nearby construction. One of the actors in their play, an older man, has one to let after the old tenant, a single woman, has suddenly left. She's left most of her stuff behind, which annoys Rana. But then one night she opens the door for someone she thinks is her husband, and is attacked.

It's never explicitly stated, but Rana is raped or otherwise sexually abused during this incident. Because the neighbors found her and helped, everyone knows about it. Going to the police is not an option because she is mortified to have to repeat the story, and nothing will likely come of it.

There is implicit criticism in Farhadi's script about how Iranian culture treats women who have been sexually abused -- with the not-at-all hidden suggestion that somehow it was her fault for "tempting" the man, who is presumed to be virtuous. For Emad, he feels compelled by a sense of honor to take matters into his own hand.

The attacker was injured and left his truck behind, so that lends some clues. Eventually Emad tracks down the young man he thinks is responsible and tries to lure him into a conversation, but his soon-to-be father-in-law shows up instead.

As Emad becomes more obsessed with finding retribution, it becomes clear that for him this is less about making his wife whole again than it is about himself. An attack upon her is foremost a besmirching of his status as a Muslim man, even a liberal one who doesn't seem to go to mosque much and stages infidel plays. Needless to say, their relationship quickly sours.

The performances are rather terrific, though the film wallows through a second act that seems like it's only setting up the pieces for the final confrontation. It is indeed a powerful one, and worth the wait.

I would've given the Oscar to any number of other foreign films from last year -- "Our Little Sister," "Dheepan" and "The Handmaiden" were my favorites -- but "The Salesman" is a worthy and weighty movie that gets inside the heads of another people very different from us, and yet not so much.

Video review: "A Separation"

An Iranian film winning an Academy Award? That might seem unlikely given the high tensions existing between our countries, but this excellent drama did take the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

The film, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, has nothing to do with politics or international intrigue. Rather, it’s an intimate story about the collision between two families, and how a seemingly minor dispute rises into a life-changing event for both clans.

Nader (Peyman Maadi) is young in age but old-fashioned in his traditional beliefs about family. He is dismayed that his wife Simin (Leila Hatami) wants to leave Iran, and is suing for divorce because of his refusal to leave. Their young daughter is caught in the middle.

Nader’s father is suffering from dementia and needs to be looked after constantly, so he hires a lower-caste woman, Razieh (Sareh Bayat). Her husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) is unemployed and ill-tempered.

Razieh and Nader get into an argument, there’s some shoving, and the next thing Nader knows he’s under arrest and charged with a serious crime. The two families end up hashing out their differences in a tiny, sweaty courtroom.

A big movie about seemingly small things, “A Separation” is first-rate storytelling, from a culture that remains largely a mystery to most Americans.

Extras are the same for DVD and Blu-ray editions, and are a little scant in scope but hefty in their impact.

Director Asghar Farhadi provides a feature-length commentary track. There are also two featurettes: “An Evening with Asghar Farhadi” and “Birth of a Director,” which explore his development of this film and evolution as a filmmaker.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "A Separation"

"A Separation" continually surprises and astonishes with its depth and authenticity. This drama about two families caught in a legal and moral conflict that threatens to destabilize both clans just won the Oscar for best foreign language film, and deserved to.

Because this is an Iranian film, it adds an extra layer of context to the travails. Our two nations have grown used to accusing each other of wildly malicious intentions, some valid and some fabricated. After more than 30 years of this, we've become accustomed to thinking of the other people as exotic and unreasonable.

The film, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, is entirely apolitical in message and theme. Its conflict is between families, and between the personalities within those families. It is a tale of relationships grown frayed, of affection that has been misplaced but not forgotten.

As the story opens, Nader (Peyman Maadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) are divorcing after 14 years of marriage. Simin wants to leave Iran for reasons that are vague, but mostly having to do with finding a better life for their 11-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). The child refuses to leave her father's side, and Nader seems to think his wife is bluffing about breaking up their family.

Complicating things is Nader's father (Ali-Asghar Shabazi), who is elderly and in the end stages of Alzheimer's. Suddenly a single parent, Nader must hire someone to look after his dad. Simin uses her contacts to find Razieh (Sareh Bayat), a lower-class woman with a young daughter.

Razieh is not comfortable with the job -- the commute is long, the pay is low, and her religious beliefs put her in a quandary about changing the old man out of his clothes after he has soiled himself. After one day, she tells Nader she must quit.

But then she has an idea: her husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) is an unemployed cobbler. Nader meets briefly with the man and agrees to hire him. But the next day Razieh shows up again, explaining that Hodjat has been put in jail by his creditors. Despite her reservations, she agrees to keep coming until her husband can work.

Then something happens. At first it seems fairly innocuous -- an argument, a push out the door. Nader can hardly believe when he is arrested and charged with a very serious crime. Soon Simin and Termeh are embroiled in the case.

What is most genuine about Farhadi's tale is his refusal to portray anyone as a villain. Even Hodjat, who is hot-tempered and at some point in the past beat his wife, is portrayed as a man devoted to his family. Razieh struggles to balance the needs of her situation, her spouse and her faith.

Nader is a good and decent man, and proud -- too proud. He refuses to seek reconciliation with Hodjat and Razieh because he is convinced he has done nothing wrong. Even after he compromises the principles he has worked so hard to instill in his daughter, Nader thinks of himself as the good guy.

Hardest to peg is Simin. In her own way she is as vainglorious as Nader; we sense that if he were to ask her to return to him, she would. But she needs to feel needed. She finds herself getting more and more involved in Nader's legal troubles than an ex-wife ought to.

I was intrigued by the depiction of the legal system in Iran, where the aggrieved parties are shut in a small room with a judge/interrogator. Lacking lawyers, they argue and bicker while the judge attempts to puzzle out the pieces. The women even seek each other out between hearings to try to find a solution.

Adherents to our American jurisprudence structure might be appalled, but I can't help thinking their way boasts some benefits our system lacks. At least when people can confront their accuser, there is a chance to see how your antagonist thinks and feels.

"A Separation" is a bold and gripping portrait of the ways in which we come together, and how we isolate one another.

3.5 stars out of four