Everybody Knows  ★★½

JAVIER Bardem and Penelope Cruz are Spanish film royalty.

Their involvement in any film will attract an international audience.

They have made nine films together, becoming a couple after meeting on the set of the sixth, Vicky Christina Barcelona, in 2007. The Counsellor in 2013 and Loving Pablo in 2017 followed.

Their latest teaming is for the 2019 kidnap drama Everybody Knows written and directed by award-winning Iranian Asghar Farhadi.

Despite all this firepower, Everybody Knows is unfortunately not in the same league as Farhadi’s two Oscar winners, A Separation and The Salesman.

Those films were engrossing, complex and well structured family dramas whereas Everybody Knows struggles to be more than an above average mystery.

The problems are partly with the pacing of the film and partly with Farhadi’s script.

The first act, within which a myriad of characters are introduced and a family wedding staged, and the third act resolution are rushed whereas the mystery unravels quite slowly inbetween. This languid pace impacts the build-up of tension.

In terms of the script, the first revelation is telegraphed well in advance and doesn’t particularly impact the relationship between two key characters involved or the drama that unfolds. The final reveal of the guilty is also a let-down.

On the plus side, Farhadi uses the location south of Madrid well and creates a strong sense of place and community. The extended wedding sequence is probably the highlight of the film, which tells you something about the strength of the mystery surrounding the kidnapping of a young teenage girl.

Cruz is good as Lucia, the tenager’s mother, while Bardem is suitably brooding as Paco who, well I’m stuill not entirely sure how he fit in.

The film has a couple of interesting things to say about the family dynamic and how suspicion of a crime immediately falls on familiar targets, but for the most part it meanders beautifully along  to a resolution that is largely a non-event.

Disappointingly un-engaging.