lasttimeisaw An extolled Aussie movie from director Ray Lawrence, who has only sporadically directed 3 films to date, LANTANA is the second one and indisputably the most well-known, in the opening gambit, a subjective camera sinuously ushers audience into a lantana bush in Sydney suburbia, instantly harks back to the beginning of David Lynch's BLUE VELVET (1986), then portentously reveals a female body and, in particular, points up the wedding ring on her finger. Who is the victim? Well, it will take over an hour before we find out, at the meantime, Lawrence impresses us as an excellent dramatist, the quotidian lives of four couples are interwoven lucidly through his ingenious diegetic device, in the center of the story is Leon (LaPaglia), a cop whose life seems to be perfect, still, he is cheating on his wife Sonja (Armstrong) with Jane (Blake), a woman recently separated from her husband Pete (Robbins). Without telling Leon, a discontented Sonja begins to visit the shrink Valerie (Hershey), to give a vent of her frustration and suspicion, meanwhile, Valerie and her husband John (Rush), an academic, are mired in inconsolable grief because two years ago, their 11-year-old daughter was murdered, to John's dissent, Valerie has written a book about their daughter to conciliate her post-traumatic state, but unbeknownst to her, John his own method to wrestle with his mourning process, an enormous emotional gap begins to drift themselves apart from each other.Soon, Jane discovers that what Leon wants is nothing but a one-night-stand because apparently he still loves his wife, she manages to make the nights into two, but their affair ends with a mutual cessation. A disheartened Jane hangs out with her next-door-neighbours, a young couple Nik (Colosimo) and Paula (Farinacci), they have three little ones, and take extra shifts in the work to make ends meet, but Paula keeps an alert eye on Jane and Nik. On the other hand, Valerie, becomes highly paranoid with her patient Patrick (Phelps), a gay man who is embroiled into a sexual relationship with a married man, she has a galling hunch that, the said married man is John and she is the wife who refuses to face the reality, during their sessions, the tension between them augments, and it doesn't augur well. The answer starts to be unveiled when Valerie is missing after presumably hitchhiking a vehicle in the late night when her car breaks down on her way home, Leo and his colleague Claudia (Purcell) start to investigate the case, and everyone aforementioned inevitably becomes a piece of the jigsaw (if one can accept the dramatic license that such coincidence can be realistically consigned to this small group of people), and the aftermath will precipitate a reverberation which can permanently affect their respective lives, to various degrees. As an archetypal character discourse, the film speaks volumes of how people constantly make wrong decisions due to our whimsical impulse and subsequently suffer from the ripple effects, in this case, a sudden death without a nominal perpetrator, still, near the end, the story lays bare who is the most culpable one. The gender politics is pungently underscored by the movie's tactful treatment of its core characters' foibles, men ooze danger from their carriage, sexually aggressive or manipulatively passive aggressive, hormone-driven and guilt-ridden, whereas women are dubious, paranoid, vindictive and perennially ambivalent in their feelings, what they say more often than not, is not consonant what they really think, yet the tenor never descends into either misandry or misogyny in Lawrence's clinical execution, because essentially those foibles are omnipresently residing inside every and each one of us, and so unobtrusive sometimes, they elude our consciousness completely, yet, the film testifies that, damage can be done, however so subliminal to each individual, a result borne out of an involuntarily accrued effect from those who are randomly interconnected. On top of that, Lawrence masters a tactile sense of fluidity and empathy into the story-line, sublimates an urban mystery into an intoxicating study of love, trust, betrayal, deception and grief, and renders its poignant after-effect anything but fault-finding.Great ensemble consisted of a mostly indigenous cast (Armstrong, Blake and Colosimo all deserve a name-check), LaPaglia returns to his motherland from his usual Hollywood turf and is instigated into an arresting turn easily his career-best, a tough cop compromised by his betrayal out of domestic ennui, not entirely sympathetic but the performance is undeniably visceral. Geoffrey Rush, buckles down to the most evasive and embattled role amongst of all, is a marvel to witness, so is Ms. Hershey, comes on board after her fantastic tour-de-force in Jane Campion's THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY (1996), she proffers her character with a strong dosage of self-affirmation and at once shows her fatal vulnerability which makes Valerie's ill-fated disappearance excruciatingly unsettling. The film corroborates again why she is the most undervalued thespian among her USA compatriots, a two-time Cannes' BEST ACTRESS honor has failed to ricochet her into a much celebrated sphere where enshrines Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek and Glenn Close of that ilk. In short, Lantana is a must-see for keen-eyed cinephiles.

Parker Lewis Lantana is a captivating Australian movie. The fact that it has nearly 17,000 IMDb votes, and over 200 user reviews is a testament to this fine movie directed by Ray Lawrence and written by Andrew Bovell.It's not an action movie, so if you're into fast and/or furious cars, Marvel superheroes, and so on, then please respectfully vacate your cinema seat, please. Just do so.The emotions that interweave in this high standard movie is incredible, and the subtlety draws you in. You can feel the tension as the scenes play out, and in a way you don't want the movie to end, so compelling it is. Lantana is a movie for the ages.

tomsview This is a complex drama. Although the film involves a murder, the story is more the exploration of a number of interconnected relationships.The film starts with a woman's body lying in a lantana bush, but we don't know who it is until the end. The story builds up to that point, and centres on a quartet of families starting with Leon Zat (Anthony La Paglia), a police detective, and his wife Sonja (Kerry Armstrong)."Lantana", the title of the film, refers to the noxious weed that grows like crazy and eventually strangles and entangles everything else in the garden - it's the perfect metaphor for the way all the various relationships are being strangled and entangled by infidelity, deception and unhappiness.The structure of the film is similar to Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" where different stories intersect at critical times.Although the film has a sense of mystery, I found "Lantana" just too serious and humourless. Unlike "Short Cuts", there really isn't a light touch in the whole thing. Anthony La Paglia's Leon Zat makes the characters played by Nicholas Cage seem deliriously happy by comparison. I am also wary in Australian movies of scenes set in psychiatrist's offices; it often allows the 'meaningful' dialogue to be delivered in very large chunks.After a while, for me at any rate, the interconnectivity - where no meeting is random - comes across as just a little too laboured. What saves "Lantana" is that everyone plays it low-key - the actors give the movie class.The brilliant Barbara Hershey has competition for attention from two other women: Kerry Armstrong and Rachael Blake. Kerry Armstrong is one of the most interesting actors in Australian film and television, and she ages beautifully.The film steps up a notch when the mystery kicks in about halfway through, and it becomes partly a police procedural."Lantana" was loved up by the critics and won every Australian film award going at the time it was released. It is the sort of smart, multi-layered film that the cognoscenti could discuss at some length over lattes on Sunday morning.The film is well made and the acting is flawless, but it seems interminably stretched out, an effect aided by the chilled out score. My main problem with "Lantana" is that it seems to self-consciously scream out "How clever is my script?" I can see the gears turning.

pontifikator This is an excellent film, with great characters and surprising twists. The movie opens with Valerie dead, lying in the thorny brush known locally as lantana - a metaphor, of course, for what life is like for the characters in the tangled plot. Valerie Somers is played by Barbara Hershey, and her husband John Knox by Geoffrey Rush. Anthony LaPaglia plays the police detective Leon Zat investigating her death. We see Valerie and John in flashbacks, showing a deteriorating relationship, and we see Leon in the present, cheating on his wife. Although none of the characters knows each other, their lives are intertwined nonetheless. It's a thicket of relationships that scratches and draws blood.LaPaglia and Rush are outstanding. John is a major suspect, as all husbands are in the deaths of their wives, and John and Leon spar as the investigation shows the bad blood between John and Valerie. We learn, finally, that John is factually innocent, but he is morally guilty of her death all the same. Leon at first sneers at John and his naked emotion, but events turn on Leon, wrenching from him his manly self esteem.This is an adult film, dealing with adult themes. No action, no gunfights, no superheroes. Just us humans muddling through. Director Ray Lawrence and writer Andrew Bovell give us much to chew over, moments of understanding, and finally acceptance of our condition.