Barnes & Noble

Marital discord takes on fatal dimensions in this moody and absorbing Australian drama set in and around Sydney. Lantana plays like a murder mystery, but the expertly constructed screenplay, adapted by Andrew Bovell from his play Speaking in Tongues, is more interested in exploring the intertwined lives of several characters and the different forms betrayal takes within their troubled marriages. It’s something of a triumph on the part of Bovell and director Ray Lawrence that they manage to make each one of these unglamorous, middle-aged individuals and their relationships compelling and believable. The soul of the movie is Anthony LaPaglia, a depressed homicide detective given to inarticulate rages who, for reasons he doesn’t fully understand, is cheating on his wife (Kerry Armstrong) with a lonely, newly separated woman (Rachael Blake). Barbara Hershey plays Armstrong’s therapist, whose own marriage to Geoffrey Rush has been frosted by the grief the couple feels over the recent murder of their preteen daughter. The movie takes its time in establishing these characters and their predicaments, so that by the time one of the principals disappears (murdered, it's presumed,), the viewer is considering much more complex questions than simply whodunit? Lantana, which swept all the major film awards in Australia, succeeds on the basis of superb performances, nuanced writing, and its air of subtle yet pervasive menace. A world apart from the sensationalistic storytelling of Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction, Lantana paints a quietly devastating portrait of contemporary marriage. Kryssa Schemmerling

All Movie Guide

The intertwined lives of four couples living in and around Sydney, Australia, form the structure for this drama masquerading as a whodunit. Andrew Bovell freely adapted his play, Speaking in Tongues, opening up the action, as the geography and topography of Sydney and its suburbs become major characters as well. The film opens with a shot of what looks like a corpse entangled in a thick stand of branches -- the title plant, which grows in profusion in Australia. Bovell and director Ray Lawrence take their time in explaining whose body that is and then slowly reveal, with no help from a number of red herrings, how it happened to be there. The principal players are Valerie Somers (Barbara Hershey), a psychiatrist with issues over her child, a murder victim; her husband, John Knox (Geoffrey Rush), an aloof professor whom she suspects of infidelity; Leon Zat (Anthony LaPaglia), a police detective cheating on his wife, Sonja (Kerry Armstrong), who is a patient of Valerie's. Zat's mistress, Jane O'May (Rachael Blake), is someone he met at a dancing class his wife dragged him to; she is estranged from her husband, Pete (Glenn L. Robbins). Their neighbors, Paula (Daniela Farinacci) and Nik D'Amato (Vince Colosimo), try to stay neutral in the O'Mays' split; she works days as a nurse and he's unemployed and minds their children. Suspicion around the disappearance of one character manages to enmesh all of the others. Bovell's stories are about secrets, real and imagined, and how they can poison relationships. The film virtually swept all the major awards at the Australian Film Institute's annual ceremony, though its reception in the States was mildly respectful. Tom Wiener

New York Times

The movie just seems to happen, to grow out of the ground like a thorny plant, revealing the intricate intelligence of its design only in hindsight. A.O. Scott

Hollywood Reporter

A strong, consistently engrossing drama that boils with emotions distinctly real and recognizable. Erin Free

Newsday

Intricate, elegant, sophisticated and multilayered drama. John Anderson

Product Details

• UPC: 031398802020
• Source: LIONS GATE
• Aspect Ratio: Cinemascope (2.35:1)
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, Español
• Time: 2:00:00
• Sales Rank: 32,256

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