The 71st Cannes Film Festival Begins with Moderate Reception of Asghar Farhadi's 'Everybody Knows'

The 71st Cannes Film Festival kicked off on Tuesday night with the screening of 'Everybody Knows', the eighth feature film by Asghar Farhadi. The film was presented with the main production team, including the director and lead actors Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, and Ricardo Darín, walking the red carpet. Before the screening, Cate Blanchett, the renowned Australian actress who chairs the jury for this edition, officially opened the festival alongside the esteemed American filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Apart from Asghar Farhadi, Hayedeh Safiyari, the film's editor, is the only Iranian filmmaker involved in the production of 'Everybody Knows', making Farhadi's latest work a completely European product, co-produced by Spain and France. Farhadi previously directed the film 'The Past' in France, but 'Everybody Knows' is considered a much more international production with a significantly larger budget. 'Everybody Knows' is a suspenseful and mysterious drama about a girl who goes missing in a small town in Spain. Laura, played by Penélope Cruz, returns to her hometown with her children, a teenage daughter and a young son, after several years of living and marrying in Argentina to attend her sister's wedding. This return initially brings joy but soon turns into a tense and breathless ordeal as her daughter goes missing during the wedding, revealing forgotten narratives and bitter past events. Thematically, the film may remind fans of Farhadi's cinema of 'About Elly', although its details are entirely different. Farhadi's favorite themes, including concealment, judgment, the impact of past actions, and moral evaluation of them, are traceable in 'Everybody Knows'. However, it seems that this time the creator of impactful films like 'The Salesman' and 'A Separation' has attempted to tell a not overly complex story with a clear and unambiguous ending, which is somewhat unexpected for his followers. Here, the viewer encounters new events in the story's progression, which the writer provides at various intervals in a precise design. However, unlike previous works, it does not have an immediate and surprising impact, so much so that the relatively long runtime of 2 hours and 15 minutes is felt by the audience. Reviews written after the film have also pointed out its length and drawn-out nature. The performance of the well-known cast is standard and acceptable. However, Javier Bardem's portrayal of a middle-aged Spanish man facing a dual love situation is clearly more distinct than that of Penélope Cruz and Ricardo Darín. Especially Penélope Cruz, whose performance significantly differs from the Iranian actresses in Farhadi's previous films, can remind one of the high quality of Iranian actresses' work. 'Everybody Knows' has been made without considering the existing restrictions in Iran for film screenings. In this regard, it is unclear whether it will be possible for it to be publicly screened in Iranian cinemas. The international critics' reception of 'Everybody Knows' was not as warm as that of several of Farhadi's recent films, although in the coming days, with the screening of other films in the competition section, a better assessment of this film's quality compared to its competitors can be made.