Lantana (2002)

best movie i've ever seen.

A lot of fun.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

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.

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 classed as a thriller, and while it doesn't have the most "thrilling" moments, it is a film that will certainly grip you. Basically it is an ensemble character film that sees Detective Leon Zat (The Client's Anthony LaPaglia) having an affair with dance class attendee Jane 'Janie' O'May (Rachael Blake), Leon's wife Sonja (Kerry Armstrong) sees psychiatrist Dr. Valerie Somers (Beaches' Barbara Hershey), and she suspects her husband John Knox (Geoffrey Rush) is having an affair with one of her gay patients. Valerie is driving home one night and has her car break down, and the next morning John reports her missing to the police, and Leon is the one investigating. After confessing his affair to an upset Sonja, Leon then goes to Valerie's married neighbours, nurse Paula Daniels (Daniella Farinacci) and husband Nik (Vince Colosimo). Nik saw Jane throw something out the car window into the Lantana plants, it's Valerie's shoe, and Nik is taken into custody refusing to answer any questions. Eventually it comes out that Nik was driving along the road, and picked Valerie up, but she jumped out again as they went along an unknown road, leaving behind the shoe. So Leon, his partner Detective Claudia Wiss (Leah Purcell), Nik and John go to the spot where she jumped out, and they do find her body, she accidentally fell down. When Leon returns home, he listens to the tapes of his wife having therapy with Valerie, she said she still loves him, and he cries. He then goes to Sonja, and then film ends with them dancing seductively together, Leon has improved his steps, and Sonja can't quite have as much passion, and whether they make up or not is not answered. With great performances, I can agree the finding of the dead body plot line becomes a little less interesting compared to the drama of the character relationships, all involving chance and coincidence, a controlled Australian film. Very good!

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.