“Everybody Knows” (2018) “Todos Lo Saben”

A wedding, a kidnapping, a secret, and a real man make “ Everybody Knows” a captivating mystery thriller. The acting is outstanding and Javier Bardem is every romantic’s dream. His character, Paco, is fun-loving, loyal, self-sacrificing, and comfortable in his skin. He has masterfully risen above his servant station with industry and love of nature’s bounty. His Spanish vineyards are producing excellent wine and his blood pulses through every scene.

Add his youthful sweetheart Laura ( Penelope Cruz ) returning to her small village outside of Madrid for her sister’s wedding without her husband.  Paco’s cool wife, Bea ( Barbara Lennie)  is wary. Everybody knows they were once on fire. Cinematic devices like bell towers with its roosting pigeons and carved stone graffiti and a majestic thunder-storm keep our emotions in tune. One trope of an ornate iron gate opening and closing is very effective.

The “who dunit” plotline , written and  directed by the Iranian director Asgar Farhadi, begins with Laura’s teenage daughter, Irene ( Carla Campra), being taken for ransom. Cruz is amazing as the frantic mother. Suffocating in secrets, Laura calls her husband , Alejandro, in Argentina to come for support. Once a heavy drinker and now bankrupt, he relies on God.

Laura has shared her secret with him, but his ego as the once benefactor of the village church has been bruised. Ricardo Darin, as Alejandro, plays a weaker foil to Paco; and we realize that class distinctions were taught to Laura through her father with ironic and sad outcomes.

Questions of love, family and choice radiate in the film’s rather abrupt closure. The question of who lost whom makes us feel like the video drones viewing all the characters from above. “Everybody knows” is long, but thoroughly engaging.

“Mother!”

I don’t have to read the 194 poetic pages of Tarja Laine’s “Bodies In Pain” to feel  auteur director Darren Aronofsky’s pain and suffering. See ” Mother!” And you will experience being put through the ringer multiple times. Viewing this well-paced film is part Fellini hell and part romantic-horror farce. Throw in the allegories of the creation myth, Cain and Able, and various biblical devotional rites and your mind is spinning in symbol, and your psyche is torn between horror and laughter. Look at the entire emotional spin as a writer, self-absorbed and caught up in the flame of fame. He knows he has taken for granted his wife-muse. Is this film auto-biographical?! The intensity would leave one to believe so. But this tale gives us more than the easy creator/user trope.

Mother is our focus. Jennifer Lawrence is the young, devoted wife deeply into nesting. She hand tints and spackles walls, mounts marble sinks, and “breathes life back” into every lovely room of an amazing Victorian farmhouse. The farmhouse itself is toured as Lawrence searches for her bed-absent husband. The mid-hued color pallet and the  use of almost radiant light kept me interested. Her perky nipples and nubile silhouette were captured to keep others engaged.

Lawrence is on-screen for almost the entire movie. Her first spoken word is a question, ” Baby” ? Abandonment is a big theme for her. She wants to be alone with her artist husband. She can’t seem to understand that she is not enough. My favorite line of Lawrence’s is ” You never loved me. You just loved how much I loved you!” This girl suffers, is brutally pummeled by her husband’s fans, has her work destroyed, and in the most terrifying scene  loses her infant son as fan fodder to the faithful. Yikes! The Christian symbolism is much askew.

Director Darren Aronofsky is forty-eight and has an impressive list of films to his credit.  Both “The Black Swan” (2010)  and ” The Wrestler” ( 2008 ) I loved.  ” Mother!”  I give a mixed review. The setting has all the possibilities of beauty amid its creaks and acid-like bloody walls. Our heroine is devoted, possessive, and scared of losing her dream. She often quaffs an amber liquid from the medicine closet that has her unreliably seeing embryonic pulsing walls. Her husband ( Javier Bardem ) is distant, pre-occupied, self-deprecating at first. He is a poet who is having trouble writing.

His sanctuary is guarded by Mother. Here, in the room at the top of the stairs, he keeps a glowing piece of fused glass. Diamond-like and cherished, it is all that is left of a fire in which our poet lost everything. It is only at the film’s end that we understand the heart of this story. The Phoenix rising from ashes is meshed with Good Friday rites and ashed foreheads. We get to figure that out.

Sounds and irritating tuning fork pings keep the story vibrating. Strange, duplicitous guests arrive. There is tension between husband and wife over priorities. Our guests are Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer, and they present more doubts about mother-muse’s status in the house. Simple smoking, drinking, and laundry scenes fuel viewer angst. There is a creepy plugged toilet, hot skillet burns, and more seeping red stains. Jennifer Lawrence is adept at tossing lace panties and unwanted cigarette lighters behind furniture. If she can’t rid herself of the intruders, she will at least remove their symbolic addictions behind appliances and furniture.

Next, we have our intruding guests’ two sons crashing in the front door. Murder and mayhem gets wilder and wilder. No character has a name. The hordes of adoring fans keep coming, and the publisher kills off a room of soldier-clad invaders.

Over the shoulder shots and close-ups that dominated the early scenes now break open showing in an all-out-war within the house. Exploded light bulbs, toads, and secret passageways, and dialing 911 doesn’t pan out. The birth scene, and the poet’s ” they have come to see me”  all gel into a swarm of holy card pictures of our poet being pinned donkey-like to the walls. Chants and crawling over bodies mingle with quiet. “They bought us gifts” our poet beams. Adoration by the masses is his desire.  He even sits in the king’s chair.  Our poor mother-muse is pummeled while our poet says, ” we must find a way to forgive.” He rips her heart out, only to do it again~ literally. The lyrics, ” it’s the end of the world if you don’t love me anymore” brings us over the top. “Why does my heart go on beating” is camp through and thorough. The credits including ink pen scratchings are creative ,too.

Farce, horror, domestic drama,and allegory  are all combined. It is an imaginative first! The Greeks ( Jennifer Lawrence wears a toga- styled Grecian gown) say that seeing pain in art makes our own lives seem better. Well, I don’t know about that!