Lantana

Hey, look at this coincidence and this other one, ooh I bet you didn't see that completely unneeded twist coming! This is what I felt the whole movie was saying. I enjoyed it until I gave it more than a second's thought and the whole thing fell apart at the seams. You can have all the twists and turns you want in a movie, but they have to be well crafted, not just thrown together simply for the sake of wowing the viewer.

A gruff man learns to cry, thereby gaining the chance to possibly save his marriage. A fair attempt at one of those ensemble-type movies that were popular in the 1990s, but, even though this has some parts that are just about adequate, and variable performances, it suffers from the seemingly incurable problem that Australians can't write. Why that should be so is rather mysterious, but we at least have to say, as Dr Phil likes to remind us, that you can't change what you don't acknowledge.

Ultimately, it's a meditation on trust, and it explores trust through a number of contexts: between lovers, man and wife, therapist and patient, parents and children, neighbors, co-workers, and total strangers. The film asks when secrecy become deceit and posits that the closer you are to someone, the more you hide from them.

I liked this. It starts a little too slow, and is probably a good 15 minutes too long, but it does manage to suck you in and is strangely compelling in the last half hour or so. Anthony LaPaglia is truly excellent in the central role, and Geoffery Rush gives a very good performance also. It occasionally feels a little clumsy and the plot too coincidental, but there are a few stand out scenes and there's just enough quality to make this a easy and enjoyable drama.

RELATIONSHIPS RELY ON TRUST!!11!

From its opening "Blue Velvet"-referencing dive until about 60' in, "Lantana" is an involving and perceptive combination of relationship drama and brooding noir. In its second half, it loses some of its drift, the themes becoming too obvious and the coincidences overplayed to no end -all climaxing in a kinda gross montage, which thankfully ends in some uncertain glares. Still, the moments of humanity (the bump of the joggers) and LaPaglia's solid performance keep it afloat even when it falters.

A strongly acted and written film that deals bluntly with the passion (or lack of) in marital relationships and the infidelity that erupts from them. With each new development in story or character appropriate and appropriately handled, if this were a TV series, I'd tuned in every week.

Interesting. Good performances, and most of the dialogue is well-written. The story has some fatal flaws, though. ALL the interweaving of characters and the innumerable coincidences are just a little too pat and neat. The main character is such a jerk to almost everyone that you really don't care whether things work out for him or not. And the device of police-work-as-catharsis REALLY doesn't work.

Grim and humourless, but incisive and superbly acted.

Fidelity is hard.

Everybody in the whole of Oztrayliya raves about this flick, I hated it...

I like slow movies but this even tried my patience. Even so it's still pretty good.

"Lantana is Ray Lawrence's Aussie rendition of Short Cuts, a multi-character relationship saga disguised as a bubbling thriller." - Ed Gonzalez

An interesting and stylish tale of entangled relationships. I was drawn into the story and the characters(very credible performances) and the wanted to know how things were going to be resolved.

I love the way this film uses the mystery of a dead woman as something of a red herring, choosing instead to focus broadly on trust, and more narrowly on marriage. The film implicitly suggests the presence of children corresponds with healthier unions. Where there is health, there is life. While the regular intersections become a bit much, the filmmakers wisely avoid over-writing the dialogue, resorting to silence and occasionally deft editing to draw out connections and comparisons/contrasts.

Very slow but entertaining. I like movies that let me make dinner, take a shower and have a nap without really missing much.