An Aussie gem that contrasts heavily dark thematic undertones with the serenely quiet seeming landscape. For movie that has little to do with murder, and more to do with the emotionally strained relationships of the characters within, it is impressive that the filmmakers/screenwriter was able to capture this tension with the minimal use of dialogue.Action was character driven and thought provoking - brilliantly performed. The takes are long in most cases and I can see why some people find this movie slow, but the effect of these longer takes is that it enables a poetic tension to build and allows for performance to take over. In a cinematic world where we are used to rapid cutting, witty fast-paced dialogue and over-used movement shots, it is reassuring to see a film that is successful at achieving an engaging story through employing simplicity.

Australian screenwriter and director Ray Lawrence's third feature film which was written by Australian playwright and screenwriter Beatrix Christian, is an adaptation of a short story by American author Raymond Carver (1938-1988) called "So Much Water, So Close to Home" from 1977. It was screened in the Special Presentations section at the 31st Toronto International Film Festival in 2006, was shot on location in Jindabyne, Australia and is an Australian production which was produced by producer Catherine Jarman. It tells the story about an Irish mechanic and former rally driver named Stewart Kane who lives in Jindabyne with his wife Claire and their son Tom. Whilst his mother Vanessa is on a visit, Stewart and his three friends Carl, Billy and Rocco goes on one of their private fishing trips. Away from their everyday lives the men enjoy the gracious peace of nature, but out there in the silence Stewart notices a woman's body in a river.Finely and precisely directed by Australian filmmaker Ray Lawrence, this quietly paced fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints draws a quiet and moving portrayal of a marriage, a relationship between a 7-year-old girl and a boy, a strange choice and a crime. While notable for it's naturalistic and atmospheric milieu depictions and sterling cinematography by cinematographer David Williamson, this dialog-driven and narrative-driven story where a community becomes so engaged with placing guilt at a group of men who acted against their better judgment that they disregard looking for the actual perpetrator, depicts some empathic and enigmatic studies of character and contains a prominent and efficient score by Australian composers Paul Kenny and Dan Luscombe.This tangible and psychological drama about interpersonal relations and culture clash which is set in a town in the South-eastern part of New South Wales during a summer, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, subtle character development and continuity, natural characters and the commendable acting performances by Irish actor Gabriel Byrne, American actress Laura Linney, Australian actress Deborra-Lee Furness and actor Sean Rees-Wemyss and Australian actress Eva Lazzaro in their debut feature film roles. A somewhat unsettling and reflective mystery from the early 21st century which gained, among several other awards, the award for Best Screenplay and the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Film at the 16th Stockholm International Film Festival in 2006.

Even in the best of all possible worlds, Jindabyne would have probably been a slow, quiet, unfocused and pretentious film. In this world, however, these filmmakers made an awesomely wrong-headed storytelling decision about half-way through. That inexplicably dumb choice invalidates everything that comes before it and turns everything that comes after in into an almost unendurable, torturous slog.Leading up to that stunningly stupid moment, this movie starts off like a horror movie with a guy in a truck pursuing a young girl in a small car. Then it breaks away from that to introduce us to a large cast of characters. Claire (the lovely Laura Linney) is an American woman living in Australia with her Irish husband Stewart (Gabriel Byrne). They have a young and emotionally delicate son named Tom (Sean Rees-Wemyss) and are one of those couples that sort of drift in and out of being connected to each other. They seem to have a conflict revolving around Stewart's mother infringing on what Claire feels is her familial territory. Claire and Stewart are friends with Carl and Jude (John Howard and Deborra-Lee Furness), an older couple raising their morbid granddaughter Caylin-Calandria (Maya Daniels) after their daughter died. Their conflict seems to be Jude's resentment that Caylin-Calandria survived while her mother died.After spending the first 20 minutes of so of the film acting as though it's going to be a coming-of-age story about the two kids surviving the turmoil of their parents and grandparents, all of that is abruptly thrown aside. Then Stewart, Carl and two other guys head deep into the Australia countryside to fish at a special river. It turns out that the guy in the truck from the beginning of the movie killed the girl and dumped her body in the river. The four fishermen find the girl's body, and here's where whatever might have been right about Jindabyne goes completely and irrevocably wrong. The four men decide to just leave the girl's body where it is and keep fishing for another day before finally notifying the police.The movie goes on after that and physically demonstrates Einstein's theories of the relativity of time, because the second half of this film takes an an eon to get through. There's a whole bit about the public revulsion at what Stewart and the other men did; the complicated marital history of Claire and Stewart; Claire goes on a quest to try and connect with the dead girl's family and atone for Stewart; the killer in the truck shows up a few times for no good reason except to keep the audience awake; we suddenly get a theme about the divide between white Australians and the Aborigines; and the story even comes back to Tom and Caylin-Calandria for a resolution to their little bit and it doesn't fit at all what they were doing in the first part of the film. And aside from Laura Linney doing some very fine acting, as usual, none of the stuff I just described is at all interesting or compelling or enlightening or entertaining. You can't care about any of that and you're left with either turning the movie off or suffering through to the end like a masochist.That's because these filmmakers botch the most important moment of this story and the most important scene in the film. That being the discussion Stewart and the others have about ignoring the dead girl and just fishing like nothing happened. The filmmakers botch it because that discussion never happens. It's not in the film. There's a scene where they find the body and then there's a scene where they're deciding what to do with the body while they're fishing, but we never get to see or hear the conversation about whether they should fish or go for the cops. It never happens.But the characters HAVE to have that conversation and the audience HAS to see them have that conversation. Not just because it's what every group of normal human beings would do, if only to verbally reassure themselves and each other that they aren't vile bastards for ignoring the dead girl, but because that's the moment when the audience is supposed to see who these guys really are, who they think they are and who they think each other is. That conversation is what is supposed to link and infuse everything that comes after it and make us remember and re-examine everything that came before that it. Without that conversation, there's this big, gaping wound in the story and it's all that you feel or focus on.I think the filmmakers did it that way because this film is really about the female characters. Claire and Jude are much more prominent and get far more lines and scenes than Stewart or Carl. In fact, almost all the female characters get more attention than their male counterparts. But the biggest and most powerful moment of the story happens to the 4 male characters. If the film correctly dealt with that moment, it would have to spend more time with those men and shove the female characters off to the side. These filmmakers didn't want to do that, but it is what the story demanded.This is another one of those films where you can really enjoy Laura Linney's performance. She gets a chance to shine the way she can as a woman who shouldn't be that likable on paper but is tremendously involving anyway. The rest of Jindabyne is either tedious or painful to sit through. It's frankly absurd how meaningful these filmmakers thought it would be, while they passed over the most meaningful aspect of the story. It's like the movie has a stroke in the middle of the story and doesn't realize its left side is paralyzed for the rest of the film.Unless you plan on fast forwarding through every scene that doesn't have Laura Linney in it…take a pass on Jindabyne.

The town of Jindabyne disappeared when the valley in which it stood was artificially flooded; the original town is submerged at the bottom of the lake, where one can even see the spire of the old church almost sticking out of the water. This is the kind of small town, in some parts of the world where all the folks are nice and decent.We meet Stewart and his wife Claire. They have a little son, Tom. Their neighbors, Jude and Carl, are the kind of solid friends one can only wish one can find. These are decent people that live in a part of Australia most tourists don't get to see. Yet, not everything is fine in town. Stewart and Claire, seem, for all practical purposes, like a happy couple, but when we really get to know them, we get a different opinion of them. Stewart's passion is fishing. He loves to go to a local river where he tries to interest Tom in his favorite pastime.As this tale begins, we watch a young woman driving on a desolate road. There is a man that is watching her progress on the road from a distance. When she is near, he jumps into the highway from his perch, and starts tailing her shouting she has something under the car. Against her better judgment, she finally decides to stop the car. Wrong move on her part. As we suspected, this stranger is a predator waiting for the right person to fall into the trap he has prepared. The woman turns out to be Susan, an aborigine from the area. We never see what happens between them, something that will become apparent later in the story.Claire finds out she is pregnant. She suffers with bouts of vomiting, but she hasn't told Stewart about her condition. A big fishing trip has been organized by Stewart. Together with Carl, Rocco and Billy, they pack their gear to a remote river. As they are starting to fish, Stewart discovers the body of a young woman. He is horrified. He calls his friends to the scene. Carl had hurt his ankle, so the quartet decides to tie up the woman so she doesn't fall into the rapids, but they continue to fish for another day. It is only after they are ready to go to their car, which had been parked quite a distance from the fishing area, they decide to notify the police.The scandal that ensues pits Claire against what Stewart offers as an explanation. She is horrified about the way her husband handled the affair. She questions the logic in his thinking and cannot condone his part in not reporting the crime. The story makes the national newspapers to the amazement of the citizens, but since they are basically all white, the incident is seen with different eyes. When Claire begins to make a collection to help Susan's family with the funeral costs, is met by the grieving relatives with suspicion. They turn her down, and what's more, they don't want any part of her apologies.We admired Ray Lawrence's "Lantana" when it first came out. We were also bowled over by this amazing Australian film in which the director proves he has a sensibility for the kind of movie that examines the way a crime is looked from the perspective of the white folks and that of the suffering family of the victim. A moral standard is at play here. The screenplay is based on a short story by Raymond Chandler. Its adaptation to the screen is by Beatrix Christian a writer that is new to us.Laura Linney is the conscience of the story. Her Claire is one of the best screen characters she had played in a while. This is a decent woman who awakens to realize the morality of the whole incident and what it does to her. Ms. Linney, who exudes intelligence in the films she graces, is the best thing in the film. Gabriel Byrne, who appears as Stewart, does a fine portrait of the man that is caught up by the actions he decided to take and who has to pay dearly for his careless disregard of reporting a crime that divides his community.The supporting cast is also notable. Specially Deborra Lee-Furness, seen as Jude in the picture. There is also a great performance by a child actress, Eva Lazzarro who shows up as Jude's disturbed granddaughter Caylin-Calandria (wherever they get that name? Sean Rees-Weemyss has some good moments as the impressionable Tom, a boy that has to live the tension of his parents' relationship.David Williamson's photography enhances the story. It adds a layer of texture to the whole film by juxtaposing the serene beauty of the majestic beauty of that part of Australia with the heinous crime at the center of the story. Ray Lawrence continues to surprise us in unexpected ways. It takes someone like this director to realize the potential of an excellent film that will stay with a viewer for quite some time after it ended.