Ray Lawrence’s Lantana is an Aussie rendition of Short Cuts, a multi-character relationship saga disguised as a bubbling thriller. Leon (Anthony LaPaglia) is in mid-life crisis mode, a cop who cheats on his wife Sonja (Kerry Armstrong) with horny adulteress Jane (Rachel Blake). Sonja, suspecting Leon of straying from the roost, takes her troubles to the psychiatrist couch. Therapist Valerie (Barbara Hershey) gets a dose of her own medicine when Sonja and a creepy gay client call entirely too much attention to her own domestic disharmony. Valerie’s husband, John (Geoffrey Rush), copes with the murder of their daughter in silence, casting a pall on their already doomed marriage. Lawrence emphasizes interconnectivity among characters when lives crisscross inside bars, homes and salsa classes. The latter is taught by a beefy Latin lothario you might suspect of the film’s crimes, which proves how successful the film is as an anxiety-ridden sweat chamber. However superficially successful the film may be at tackling issues of repression and bottled-up secrets waiting to spill, Lantana is death waiting to happen. Once it comes, Lawrence takes his time deftly tearing away at scruples and insecurities only to discover lives nearly blurred beyond recognition. Everyone’s a suspect, everyone cheats (others and themselves) but guilt is never certain.
Leon goes running only to bump into a man at a street corner. Leon’s instinctual response is to react violently yet the bloodied stranger begins to cry. As the man walks away, Leon is left to comprehend the mystery of the man’s predicament. As wondrously unexplained as these moments may be, Andrew Bovell (adapting from his stage play Speaking in Tongues) shatters many of the film’s myths through effusive dialogue. When Leon begins to investigate John, their shared marital dilemmas are cozily emphasized through his conveniently obtrusive choice of words. While character run-ins aren’t as smoothly Altmanesque as they could have been (there aren’t enough characters here to merit the film’s many coincidences), Lawrence cleverly plays most of these interactions for laughs. As mysteries unravel, so do character relationships—much like the lantana plant that grows outside Jane’s garden, though Lawrence’s symbolism is evocative enough to never really call too much attention to itself. As a murder mystery, Lantana is subdued and carefully modulated though Bovell’s use of sexuality as a red herring is cheap and gratuitous at best. In the end, Lawrence is most successful at emphasizing familial distance through physical absence; once Valerie disappears, the film’s couples figuratively tango toward each other as if fearing their final damnation. Lantana’s final shot literalizes this movement in a stunningly tranquil antidote to the film’s otherwise ferocious grip.
Image/Sound
Trimark preserves Lantana’s 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio with the film’s DVD release and while cinematographer Mandy Walker’s color palette is about as beautiful to look at as the lantana flower, skin tones are slightly blurry throughout the disc. Blacks are rock solid and shadow delineation is very precise yet edge enhancement is noticeable during many of the film’s interior night scenes. The 5.1 Dolby Digital mix is uncluttered and very intimate for most of the film’s running time.
Extras
A 43-minute making-of documentary titled “The Nature of Lantana” is the disc’s highlight if only because it’s a darker, more dignified version of what you’d normally get on bigger budgeted discs. This featurette includes interviews from the cast and crew and while much of the thematic discussion is rather broad and uninspired, there’s plenty of insight into Lantana’s technical achievements: the lighting schematics, the lenses and the nurturing of the film’s score. A commentary track with director Ray Lawrence, writer Andre Bovell and producer Jan Chapman (The Piano) is noticeably spare. Bovell discusses the differences between his play and screenplay, Chapman lovingly praises the cast and Lawrence mentions his desire to avoid comparisons to Fatal Attraction. Only Lawrence addresses the film’s questionable use of homosexuality as a red herring and, even then, it’s merely to address how he didn’t want any of the actors playing the film’s psychologically-damaged homosexual to leave the affectations behind. Also included here is the film’s theatrical trailer.
Overall
A flawed but intimate DVD presentation for Australia’s critically acclaimed Lantana.
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