Synopsis
Laura, a Spanish woman living in Buenos Aires, returns to her hometown outside Madrid with her Argentinian husband and children. However, the trip is upset by unexpected events that bring secrets into the open.
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Cast
- Penélope CruzLaura
- Javier BardemPaco
- Ricardo DarínAlejandro
- Bárbara LennieBea
- Inma CuestaAna
- Elvira MínguezMariana
- Eduard FernándezFernando
- Ramón BareaAntonio
- Sara SálamoRocío
- Carla CampraIrene
Recommendations
- 83
IndieWire
It’s a taut setup that risks veering into soapy territory, but Farhadi reveals just enough involving details to pause at individual moments and rest on more intimate observations. - 80
The Guardian
Farhadi’s storytelling has overpowering force. - 80
Screen Daily
Making fine use of a top-flight Spanish-speaking cast, Asghar Farhadi deftly inserts love, resentment, class, money and family ties into a propulsive narrative replete with doubts, accusations, intimations, red herrings and other welcome ingredients from the suspenseful-drama arsenal. - 80
New York Magazine (Vulture)
The mystery becomes popcorn-chompingly compelling, each new piece of information adding shading and dimension to the true shape of the family. Nobody is above suspicion or below empathy. - 75
The A.V. Club
Quintessentially, and maybe to a fault, this is a Farhadi movie: another of the writer-director’s gripping studies of a family torn asunder by a compounding mess of deception and revelation. - 70
Variety
Though the film is slow to reach a place where its revelations can have an impact, once that starts to happen, it becomes compulsively absorbing. - 67
The Playlist
Farhadi’s genius is to be able to take the most ordinary of situations (say, a separation) and turn it into the stuff of gripping sociological drama. But largely, this time out, he’s rather done the reverse: given a gripping premise and a game cast he has engineered perhaps his most ordinary film. - 60
The Hollywood Reporter
If the film remains largely watchable it is because Farhadi has cast some of the finest actors in Spain and they know how to breathe life into their characters even when they don’t have all that much to do (though a few of them have quite a lot to say).
