Ray Lawrence's LANTANA is an intelligent, well-written, well-acted film that is much more than just another cop thriller--it's more like YOU CAN COUNT ON ME with its realistic, complex relationships and believable characters. The film opens with a slow pan over a dead body, eerily reminiscent of BLUE VELVET. Anthony LaPaglia stars as Leon, a Sydney police detective who is cheating on his wife, Sonja (Kerry Armstrong), with a married woman from their dance class (Rachael Blake), even though he still loves his wife. There's something missing from his life, but he's not sure what. His relationship with his son is strained, and even his partner, Claudia (Leah Purcell), knows something is wrong. But as his affair heats up and a murder mystery that seems to involve all of the people in his life begins to consume his attentions, he is forced to reexamine his future both as a family man and a cop.
LANTANA won seven Australian Film Institute Awards, including best picture, best director for Lawrence, best actor for LaPaglia, best actress for Armstrong, best supporting awards for both Blake and Colosimo, and best adapted screenplay by Andrew Bovell, who based the script on his play SPEAKING IN TONGUES. As the murder investigation gets more complicated and the tangled web leads to even more lying, cheating, and deception, the acting intensifies, and the sharp dialogue allows the characters to blossom as beautifully as the lantana bush referred to in the title.
(24 votes)
2.
Everyone has something to hide.
A woman disappear. Police detective Leon Zat (Anthony LaPaglia), consumed with guilt about cheating on his wife, becomes embroiled in the missing persons investigation. Four couples are drawn into the tangled web of love, deceit, sex and death. Their secrets and lies crisscross Leon's investigation and illuminate the personal crisis he must resolve. Everyone has something to hide… not all of them will survive.
(23 votes)
3.
It's always slightly shocking to see a movie in which the actors look and behave like real people rather than glamorous movie stars--and that's part of the power of Lantana. But its real strength lies in its carefully observed script and the rich, committed performances of its cast. Anthony LaPaglia stars as a cop with an unsteady marriage; when he begins to investigate the disappearance of a noted therapist (Barbara Hershey), he suspects that her marriage to an academic (Geoffrey Rush) was similarly troubled, and he pursues the case as if his own marriage could be redeemed through it. Every character in Lantana is fully developed, sometimes with astonishing conciseness; the coincidences that drive the plot seem as faultlessly organic as the ones that might happen in your own experiences. (Lantana, incidentally, is a kind of plant; no doubt its interlocking foliage mirrors the movie's story.) --Bret Fetzer
(22 votes)
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