Asghar Farhadi’s “Everybody Knows,” which launched the 2018 Cannes in May, transplants many of the Iranian director’s usual concerns to a small village in Spain. The advance word called it a psychological thriller, and it does contain some thriller elements such as a crime and a race against time to save a young girl who’s gone missing.
But this is not Farhadi doing a genre exercise; as is most of his work, “Everybody Knows” is a quietly gripping examination of societal divisions, of class, of secrets that bind us together and pull us apart. And it’s about what happens when secrets aren’t really secrets, when “everybody knows” — or suspects, or at least gossips.