Cannes 2018: Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem were paid equally for Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows

Shortly after Everybody Know opened the Cannes Film Festival, Focus Features acquired the film. The specialty division of Universal Pictures said Wednesday that it will distribute it in the US and much of the world.

Talking about Farhadi, Cruz told media persons in Cannes, “He has a lie detector,” said Cruz, who saw the film for the first time last night, as reported by Indie Wire. “He sees through everything…He’s a wonderful observer…He was like a sponge in the way people live and people talk. How can he identify when we make a mistake in one line? He doesn’t have control over the language, he doesn’t sleep, he was memorizing all of our dialogues. He remembers all of our lines. You could never trick him or fool him. He was open to discussion, involved in every single thing.”

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Farhadi has won two Academy Awards for best foreign language film, for A Separation and The Salesman. Producers said they will also aim for the Oscars with Everybody Knows.

In an early review for Everybody Knows on Variety, Peter Debruge writes, “A bit of lingering mystery can be a good thing, but this film lacks the precision — or ambition — of Farhadi’s earlier work.” Similar is the sentiment of Nicholas Barber at BBC, “Ultimately, Everybody Knows – which, to my surprise, has nothing to do with the Leonard Cohen song – isn’t Farhadi at his searing best. The regular, methodical airing of family grievances around the kitchen table calls to mind a soap opera.”

(with inputs from AP)