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.

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.

This is a great Aussie film! A very strong, emotionally demanding story of love and trust and longing, set in what seems to be a suburb out of Sydney. Supposedly a suspense thriller, Lantana is in fact a psychological drama about several middle-aged couples whose paths cross, and who are experiencing various degrees of marital and family problems. These interrelated stories form a credible plot that skillfully examines the emotional havoc and pitfalls experienced by many people who are in their forties-fifties, and which at the same time provides an entertaining mystery. The acting is superb, particularly Anthony LaPaglia who portrays a policeman, a complex man who is having an affair amidst his mid-life crisis. All of the characters are believable and fully fleshed out. The screenplay is beautifully written; the direction and the cinematography are superb. More than happy to give it 8 stars and recommend it.

Australian screenwriter and director Ray Lawrence's second feature film which was written by Australian playwright and screenwriter Andrew Bovell, is an adaptation of Andrew Bovell's stage play called "Speaking in Tongues" from 1996. It premiered at the 48th Sydney Film Festival in 2001, was shot on location in Sydney, Australia and is an Australian production which was produced by Australian producer Jan Chapman. It tells the story about a police officer named Leon who lives in a suburb with his wife named Sonja and their two sons. Leon and Sonja are both having concerns about their marriage and whilst Sonja talks to a psychiatrist named Valerie, Leon befriends a woman named Jane. Distinctly and precisely directed by Australian filmmaker Ray Lawrence, this rhythmic fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints, draws an invariably engaging portrayal of a cop who after beginning an affair with a woman he meets at a dancing course learns that a therapist has disappeared. While notable for it's naturalistic milieu depictions, sterling production design by production designer Kim Buddee, cinematography by cinematographer Mandy Walker and costume design by costume designer Margot Wilson, this character-driven and narrative-driven story depicts several interrelated and refined studies of character and contains an efficient score by Australian composer Paul Kelly. This romantic, conversational and atmospheric thriller which is set in Sydney, Australia and where interpersonal relations and personalities are acutely examined and characters as poignant as the stories, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, subtle character development, enigmatic characters, incorporation of theater in cinema and the reverent acting performances by Australian actors Anthony LaPaglia and Geoffrey Rush, Australian actresses Rachael Blake and Kerry Armstrong and American actress Barbara Hershey. An eloquent, dramatic and multifaceted mystery from the early 2000s which gained, among numerous other awards, the award for Best Film at the 43rd AFI Awards in 2001.