There are homecomings, and there are homecomings...

Some Tweets in response to Todos lo saben (Everybody Knows) (2018)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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8 April

Some Tweets in response to Todos lo saben (Everybody Knows) (2018), as seen at Saffron Screen, Saffron Walden, on Monday 8 April 2019 at 8.00 p.m.

In Todos lo saben (Everybody Knows) (2018) last night at @SaffronScreen, it really felt as we were in the tense suspicious centre of something happening, as if Ibsenesque secrets became discovered in Murder on The Orient Express* (1974) !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 9, 2019

As taught and intense as Celda 211 (Cell 211) (2009), Todos lo saben will not let us go, and we cannot but engage with it : in both, the age-old struggle around the life-blood of a daughter that makes the Oresteia of Aesychlus compelling for Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. pic.twitter.com/KUAMFOnMca

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 10, 2019

Here, a surprise is realizing that it's Asghar Farhadi, the writer / director of films such as Fireworks Wednesday (2006), The Past (2013), The Salesman (2016) - though the last does have a break brutality, too. Billed as a thriller, it is every bit that, and shreds our nerves ! pic.twitter.com/ytZYtzTKjF

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 10, 2019

Perhaps, and meanwhile one reflects on Pinter and what he gives us, in The Homecoming, with Teddy and Ruth - and how Farhadi's use of Ricardo Darín in the role of Alejandro subtly imports the presence of a figure like that of Donald Sutherland (and another lost daughter ?)... pic.twitter.com/QJKbPjYCCC

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 10, 2019

* A film scored by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, with his customary style and flair, and how we miss him at @ConcertsatKings as a real gent in duos with @CmartinJazz (and the occasional number or two where he accompanied himself) !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 9, 2019

Epilogue :

I can’t agree with this. One of the least suspenseful whodunnits I’ve ever seen. Not without its merits, I thought it was well shot certainly, and the director gets his money’s worth from his actors (at 2.5 hours it as least 30 mins too long) but do not expect to be thrilled.

— Rob Adam (@rob_adam123) April 10, 2019

3) I suggested the secrets that come out in the plays of Henrik Ibsen - if one doesn't credit Laura that she suspects that Paco is getting back at her, though, the film won't work in one's head. Dunno.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 10, 2019

Or, to give the closing words to @everyfilmneil, from the final sentences of his review (at www.everyfilm.co.uk) :

Farhadi has built a reputation through movies such as A Separation, The Salesman and my favourite of his films, The Past. Everybody Knows keeps up his tradition of keenly observed, tense drama. It helps that his most established cast to date are on great form.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)