Everyone’s hiding something in this murder mystery. [R]
By: Kam Williams
Coincidence has certainly enjoyed a cinematic resurgence of late, with such films as Happenstance, Amelie, Mulholland Drive and Serendipity all making the most of the thematic contrivance. This popular plot device also is central to the storyline of Lantana, a complicated thriller from the Land Down Under, directed by Ray Lawrence.
The Aussie’s only other offering was Bliss (1985), a fairly faithful adaptation of Peter Carey’s surreal novel, which still somehow failed to effectively capture the surreal quality of the book. Lawrence, who had written Bliss’ unworkably wordy script, wised up when it came to Lantana.
Rachael Blake stars in Lantana, a film adaptation of Australian Andrew Bovell’s play.
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This go-round, he hired Andrew Bovell, the author of the endlessly elliptical Speaking in Tongues, to adapt his award-winning play to the big screen. Bovell, a celebrated playwright in his native Australia, is perhaps best known for scribing Strictly Ballroom (1992), the flamboyantly funny film classic about ballroom dancing that played like Dirty Dancing done by John Waters.
Though drifting far afield for the relatively dark Lantana, Bovell has crafted a compelling thriller that is no less a success than the brilliant Ballroom. Here, collaborators Bovell and Lawrence weave an amazingly intricate, intimate tale out of the incestuous labyrinth of lives intersected by chance.
The title is borrowed from the beautiful-but-thorny indigenous bush that serves as the symbolic inspiration for this beguiling crime drama. As with the lantana, what at first blush appears to be a superficial, sensual delight turns ever so slowly into a tawdry, twisted tale of murder. The film starts out as a sordid soap opera about four couples in crisis but evolves into a mystery when a disappearance in their midst overshadows all the bed-hopping and badinage.
The ensemble cast asked to execute the movie’s wonderfully enveloping screenplay is headed by Anthony LaPaglia as Leon Zat, a hard-nosed, rogue detective in charge of the missing persons department. Zat also happens to be a guilt-ridden adulterer, cheating on his wife, Sonja (Kerry Armstrong), with Jane (Rachel Blake), an attractive married woman in their Salsa dance class.
The film co-stars Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush as John Knox, the sexually ambiguous husband of Dr. Valerie Somers (Barbara Hershey), an openly ambitious psychologist who cashed in on their daughter’s murder by writing a best-seller about the tragedy.
The plot thickens when Dr. Somers, who suspects her vaguely gay hubby might be straying with one of her patients, uncharacteristically vanishes without explanation. Before a body has even been found, it falls to the philandering Detective Zat to crack the case.
His investigation reveals many who might have a motive for murder. Even his lover, Jane, emerges as a material witness who must be questioned about the disappearance. Because Mr. Knox might be a closeted homosexual and cannot adequately explain his whereabouts on the night in question, he, too, becomes a prime suspect.
When Zat resorts to unethical measures such as listening to tapes of the shrink’s sessions with her clients, he develops further suspicions centering around the doctor’s client who might have been her husband’s lover. Lantana layers it on thick, as virtually every player ultimately gets implicated or incriminated in this fly-paper-sticky scenario.
A claustrophobic crime caper best left as unspoiled as possible.
Rated R. Contains brief nudity, profanity, a gruesome corpse and several sexual situations.