LANTANA
Starring:
Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey, Rachael Blake and Kerry
Armstrong
Director: Ray Lawrence
Running Time: 115 mins
Certificate: 15
Sydney Police Detective Leon Zat (LaPaglia) feels numb. His relationship with his wife Sonja (Armstrong) is deteriorating and he has already found solace with another woman, Jane (Blake) from his wife's dance class. The pressure of the truth starts to build when he is assigned to investigate the disappearance of Dr Valerie Somers (Hershey), who happens to be his wife's psychiatrist and the main suspect to the killing is a friend of his lover.
This is an Australian attempt at interweaving the lives of many different characters around one central event. Where Robert Altman and more recently Paul Thomas Anderson have got this down to a tee, this movie is missing two key factors good dialogue and a good story.
The Australian cast, including Anthony LaPaglia (Yes, he is from Oz) and Geoffrey Rush, and token American Barbara Hershey, all give very convincing performances. The problem is that the story is uninteresting and un-involving. The backgrounds to the characters are never fleshed out, giving you no reasons to why they have been drawn into these situations and any reasons to hope that they get themselves out of them.
The dialogue is also a problem as it is extremely basic and never provocative. Whether this is a reflection of what the filmmakers think Australian middle and lower class conversation is like or it was just that these characters were never supposed to have anything more had two minutes worth of communication, this only adds to the frustration.
The whole film is a missed opportunity as subject matter had the scope to be a lot more interesting. The issues of adultery, grief, mistrust and depression are a good melting pot for a movie of this sort but this film, while not a complete failure as the performances are very good, seems to run out of steam far too early to hold your interest.
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The Usher 2002
