He says he and Cruz had some input about the Spanish: 'Mostly we brought things about the language, about the complexity of the sentences.'īut he adds that the Iranian director 'knew a lot' and the film was '99 percent' his.Īnd it had all the ingredients of 'a Farhadi movie'. 'I believe in that country, that city, those people. 'I smell Spain,' in Farhadi's film, he adds. 'Woody Allen's movie is about cliches, about what the foreign tourists are looking for, they go to Barcelona for that,' Bardem says.

He says their latest film together was different from another set in Spain, Woody Allen's 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'. Up for the Cannes' top Palme d'Or prize, 'Everybody Knows' is a psychological thriller about a wedding in a small town that is turned upside down by a family tragedy.īardem stars alongside his wife and fellow Oscar-winner Penelope Cruz, their ninth film together and second in a row after last year's 'Escobar'.

'When I saw 'The Past' and I understood he can do it,' the 49-year-old actor said in an interview in Paris. When Iranian director Asghar Farhadi told Javier Bardem that he wanted to make a film in Spanish set in Spain, the Oscar-winning actor says he 'was like really? OK, that's brave'.īut the Spanish star says the result - 'Everybody Knows', which will open Cannes film festival on Tuesday - is 'more Spanish than many Spanish movies made in Spain!'įarhadi's 'A Separation' and 'The Salesman' both won foreign language Oscars, but it was his 2014 French feature 'The Past' that changed Bardem's mind.

Brave in spanish movie