Laura (Penélope Cruz) returns to her small Spanish town with her children to attend her sister's wedding. She reconnects with the love of her life, Paco (Javier Bardem). During the wedding, her daughter Irene goes missing. She finds clippings of a kidnapped girl from the past and receives a text demanding a ransom. She is told not to contact police. As the situation deteriorates, suspicions descend on the family and old secrets resurface.

The start is a little slow and the kidnappers' identity need more hints. Otherwise, this is a good little mystery. With all the secrets and twists, it could be a short mini-series. It's already two hours long. Cruz and Bardem headline a solid cast. It does require more on the other characters. The reveal isn't as shocking since it doesn't get the setup that it requires. Overall, it's very compelling.

"Todos lo saben" or "Everybody Knows" is a new Spanish movie from 2018 and this one was written and directed by Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi. The latter has won Foreign Langiage Film Oscars with two of his last three works, a pretty unique success in recent years and I would say here we get him reaping the harvest internationally, which is not true in the sense that he is off to Hollywood not, but he is off to Europe instead and gets to work with Oscar-winning couple Bardem and Cruz instead. It is a family drama for sure. I am not sure I'd say the crime and thriller elements are dominant enough here to use them in order to describe this film. I think not. It all starts pretty harmlessly with a whole lot of folks meeting for a wedding, but it's never about the newlyweds, but about their relative instead. And thinks take a dark turn when a (very) young woman gets abducted and she is the daughter of Cruz' character. As a consequence, her husband arrives fairly quickly too (played by the always good Darín) and we find out a great deal about Cruz' character's life in the now as well as her past when she was still in a relationship with Bardem's character. This relationship is referenced pretty early on too as the (not so secret) secret mentioned in the title, but the longer the film goes, the more obvious it becomes that there is another (not so secret) secrat that everybody knows about and that also explains why Bardem's character (or I should say his wife) is getting the text messages by the abductors as well. Honestly I felt it did become a film similar to a better telenovela at times and this did surprise me a bit because really it felt so different compared to Farhadi's other works, like the two Oscar-winning movies I mentioned earlier already. Maybe he does better with subtle material I don't know. The actual fathership, the vineyard, the family history about selling said vineyard at a way too low price, the struggling of Darín's character, the other young woman (and her man) being shown as the perpetrators etc. it was all too much I'm afraid, even for such a long film, considerably over 2 hours. I think it would have been a better choice to show how the girl is rescued, but not show us who did it really. The path they actually took instead feels like a rushed-in crime mystery too be honest and it isn't working particularly well at all. However, the scene when she gets caught by the older woman (her mother?) and we see the dirty shoes that we also see next to the girl when she is rescued was pretty good. I also liked the very final moment when she is really to talk about what she witnessed to another character (that one was my guess who did it by the way). The reference about another abduction a long time earlier is not working at all, feels like a really shoddy True Detective parallel that gets in no tension by any means. I also think that Cruz and Bardem were somewhat wasted on many occasions, especially Cruz' character could/should have been far more interesting, but it all comes down to a sob fest for her in the end. She had some solid material, but her delivery wasn't always on point. Bardem did not have the material which disappointed me a lot as he was the main reason I watched this (next to Farhadi and Darín maybe). Actually the partners of these two and what they added to the story was more interesting in my opinion, but those weren't at the film's core obviously and most of the stuff right at the film's core, such as the aforementioned vineyard history story, were mostly underwhelming. Still it is an okay movie, just not at the level where I would say it is really anywhere near the career-best efforts from everybody part of this project and the premise sounds far more tempting than the outcome proves to be in the end. I give "Todos lo saben" a cautious thumbs-up and lets just add at the very end that Irene (or the actress) is really among the most stunning i have seen in theaters in the previous 12 months.

This is a drama, but it's also a bit of mystery woven/mixed into it. Actually some may even call it a thriller. Whatever your perspective on it is, you cannot deny the quality of the script and the acting in it. Now since this is spanish language and some don't like subtitles, this may be a tough watch for you. And that is true in any circumstance because this is quite heavy.

It's not just a feel good movie, that you can watch passing time and having a blast. There are other movies for that. So if you are ready (more or less) for what the movie has to offer, you will be thrilled and probably on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Character decisions may seem weak and even mean to say the least, but that is what life sometimes offers us. And we never know what could have been if ... we decided differently in any point in life. But we can watch this unfold ...