By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
Those who admire Iranian filmmaker Ashgar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning “The Salesman” and “The Separation,” may discover “Everybody Knows,” his first foray in Spanish, isn’t quite up to the high standards he’s set for himself. Nevertheless, it’s intriguing.
For many years, Laura (Penélope Cruz) has lived in Buenos Aires, but now she’s back in her hometown, outside Madrid, for the wedding of her younger sister, Ana (Irma Cuesta), to Joan (Roger Casamajor).
Accompanying Laura are her teenage daughter, Irene (Carla Campra) and younger son, Diego (Ivan Chavero), while their Argentine father, Alejandro (Ricardo Darin) remains at home. They’re staying on the estate of Laura’s aging, alcoholic father, Antonio (Ramon Barea).
While the nuptial mass is underway, rebellious Irene sneaks up to the church’s belfry with Felipe (Sergio Castellanos), who tells her that his Uncle Paco (Javier Bardem) was Laura’s childhood sweetheart.
That’s assumed to be common knowledge — but isn’t. Paco is now a successful local vintner, married to childless Bea (Barbara Lennie).
During the wine-drenched reception, there’s a thunderstorm and power outage. Irene has been kidnapped and the ransom text has specific instructions not to go to the police.
Desperate, Laura turns to her family and Paco. Yet, when a retired detective (Jose Angel Egido) starts investigating, everyone’s a suspect, including Alejandro, who appears unexpectedly.
Apparently, Ashgar Farhadi wrote the original draft in Farsi, which was later translated into Spanish, then English. So it shouldn’t be surprising that much of the whodunit melodrama, which he directed using interpreters, gets muddled, as if caught in a magician’s misdirection.
Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s longtime cinematographer, Jose Luis Alcvaine, sublimely captures the bucolic appeal of Torrelaguna, a small village north of Madrid.
FYI: Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem have been married since 2010; this is their fifth collaboration (“Jamon, Jamon,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” “The Counselor,” “Loving Pablo”).
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Everybody Knows” is a secretive 7. As Farhadi says, “Everything you see within the frame helps you envision what exists out of it.”
Since I don’t watch pro wrestling on TV, I was unfamiliar with World Wrestling Entertainment’s Diva champion Paige who inspired the biopic “Fighting With My Family.”
Saraya-Jade Bevis (Florence Pugh) was raised by parents, Ricky (Nick Frost) and Julia (Lena Headley) Knight, who run a minor league wrestling league in Norwich, England.
At first, Saraya wasn’t really interested in joining their troupe but, after an exhibition bout with her ambitious big brother Zak Zodiac (Jack Lawson), she became enthused.
As Saraya and Zak set their sights on the WWE, heading for tryouts in London, they have a chance encounter with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who urges them not to try to imitate anyone else; instead, he advises them to be themselves.
Talent scout/coach Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn) is interested in promoting Saraya — not Zak, which causes a bit of a family crisis since despairing Zak has a wife (Hannah Rae) and new baby.
Goth-girl Saraya then rebrands herself as Paige, after Rose McGowan on TV’s “Charmed.”
When Paige arrives at the WWE’s NXT training facility in Orlando, Florida, she faces not only loneliness but also disillusionment, discovering that her fellow recruits are conventionally sexy blonde, bikini-clad models/dancers: ”We’re just tits and ass, right?”
Wrong, apparently, since Paige struggles to keep up during Basic Training, facing physical and psychological challenges. Meanwhile, back home, her family also grapples with change.
As pro wrestling fans know, flamboyant Paige became WWE’s Divas Champion at age 21. After a sex tape hacking and a 2018 ring injury, she’s now retired from wrestling at age 26.
Dwayne Johnson immediately identified with this often-dysfunctional wrestling family. So his Seven Bucks Productions hired writer/director Stephen Merchant (co-creator of the British version of “The Office”) to develop the often predictable, triumph-of-the-underdog concept.
On the Granger Gauge, “Fighting With My Family” is a simplistic, solid 6, a scrappy smackdown.
Rupert Wyatt’s wannabe sci-fi feature “Captive State” is so jumbled and idiotic that I’m stunned it ever got released.
It begins in Chicago’s bleak, wasteland remains in 2027, nine years after Earth was invaded by spiny, insectoid aliens who called “Legislators.” At first glimpse, they look like huge, angry porcupines, riding around in a spaceship that resembles a large, lumpy sweet potato or yam.
This technologically superior, occupying force exploits Earth’s resources, maintaining authoritarian stability from their walled-off, underground lairs. Predictably, there are defiant dissidents and secret collaborators. And it’s often hard to tell the difference.
Teenage Gabriel Dummond (Ashton Sanders) works in a digital device factory. His older brother Rafe (Jonathan Majors) was a guerrilla martyr. So he’s an obvious recruit when Phoenix rebels plan to bomb a huge ‘unity’ rally in Soldier Field. Their credo is “Light a match. Ignite a war.”
Chicago’s most stolid lawman, cagey William Mulligan (John Goodman), knows something’s afoot in the inner-city, barking orders when he’s not visiting his favorite prostitute (Vera Farmiga), dancing to the music of Nat King Cole’s classic “Stardust.”
Scripted by Wyatt and his wife, Erica Beeney, the extraterrestrial action is unfocused and muddled, while the Earthling characters are so undeveloped, that it’s incoherent, despite its climactic twist and subdued sociopolitical subtext about making moral choices under duress.
What’s unbelievably ludicrous is that resistance freedom-fighters communicate via ‘classified ads’ in local newspapers which, evidently, still exist. Then there’s that Trojan horse, a literary allusion to Greeks bearing gifts, along with Rob Simonsen’s perpetually pulsating score.
Why didn’t Focus Features jettison this disaster? British writer/director/producer Rupert Wyatt is the founding member of Picture Farm, a film collective. His claim-to-fame is having directed “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011), spawning one sequel and a second in the works.
On the Granger Gauge, “Captive State” is a tediously tiresome 2, a totally unsatisfying waste-of-time.
(Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
