Starring: Anthony La Paglia, Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey, Kerry Armstrong
Director: Ray Lawrence
Rated: MA15+
LANTANA comes from a stage play entitled Speaking in Tongues.
I wish they had kept that name. It throws more light on the complexity of this psychological thriller than the name of the dense Australian bush.
Dr Valerie Somers (Barbara Hershey) dies in thick lantana near Sydney. The police investigation involves looking into the lives of four marriages. The more Detective Leon Zat (Anthony LaPaglia) sees into other people’s marriages, he has to face his own.
It’s hard to find a happily married person in this film. If they are not deceiving their partner, they are thinking about it. There are depressed, homosexual, separated, adulterous, estranged and alienated spouses here. While there are a few reconciliations in the end, we have to wade through several unhappy tales to get to there.
Lantana has a complex plot and has genuine intrigue. Very little in this film is as it appears. But by the end Ray Lawrence wants to tie off all the loose ends and so we are given a quick collage of ‘what happens next’. It’s too contrived.
St Paul wisely advises that no one should speak in tongues without an interpreter present. For all the hope of the end, Lantana’s interpretation on the state of Australian marriages is very bleak indeed.
