Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16098 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-03-17
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 115 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Lantana teased its subtle way into the minds of cinemagoers in 2002 with a welcome reminder that nothing succeeds like a well-written, hypnotically acted drama that reflects the humanity, complexity and frailty of its audiences right back at them. Lantana is about betrayal, grief beyond recovery and the tenuous threads by which the most superficially ordinary relationships founder or survive. At the same time, it is quietly and profoundly life-affirming. It is, as producer Jan Chapman suggests during the director's commentary, "a film you have to pay attention to". But it rewards that attention.

Andrew Bovell's economic, absorbing script is based on his original stage play Speaking in Tongues. A series of coincidences creates a network of links between characters with unsettling and often shattering consequences. Like another Australian classic, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Lantana explores a constantly shifting line between deceit and honesty. It is a psychological mystery in which the land itself claims a life that has nowhere else to go. Director Ray Lawrence draws minutely observed performances from his actors, particularly Anthony LaPaglia as Leon, the Sydney detective in the throes of mid-life crisis, Kerry Armstrong as his wife Sonia and Barbara Hershey as Valerie, the psychologist whose panic finally releases her from an untenable situation. Lantana is engrossing from beginning to end.

On the DVD: Lantana is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, bringing the extraordinary, realistic lighting of the original cinematography to life on the small screen. Paul Kelly's brooding score and the leitmotif of the Salsa songs make huge contributions to an intimate and often raw viewing experience. Apart from the fascinating director's commentary which tellingly reveals that a major Hollywood studio loved the concept but declined the project because the marketing department couldn't work out how to sell it, extras include the requisite making-of documentary, trailers and biographies. --Piers Ford

Special Features
2.35:1 anamorphic widescreenDolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Surround
Subtitles: English
Director's Commentary
The Nature of Lantana (documentary)
Trailers
Biographies

Synopsis
Ray Lawrence's LANTANA is an intelligent, well-written, well-acted film that is much more than just another cop thriller--it's more like YOU CAN COUNT ON ME with its realistic, complex relationships and believable characters. The film opens with a slow pan over a dead body, eerily reminiscent of BLUE VELVET. Anthony LaPaglia stars as Leon, a Sydney police detective who is cheating on his wife, Sonja (Kerry Armstrong), with a married woman from their dance class (Rachael Blake), even though he still loves his wife. There's something missing from his life, but he's not sure what. His relationship with his son is strained, and even his partner, Claudia (Leah Purcell), knows something is wrong. But as his affair heats up and a murder mystery that seems to involve all of the people in his life begins to consume his attentions, he is forced to reexamine his future both as a family man and a cop.
LANTANA won seven Australian Film Institute Awards, including best picture, best director for Lawrence, best actor for LaPaglia, best actress for Armstrong, best supporting awards for both Blake and Colosimo, and best adapted screenplay by Andrew Bovell, who based the script on his play SPEAKING IN TONGUES. As the murder investigation gets more complicated and the tangled web leads to even more lying, cheating, and deception, the acting intensifies, and the sharp dialogue allows the characters to blossom as beautifully as the lantana bush referred to in the title.

Customer Reviews

A film for grown-ups
This is an excellent film that explores the emotional turmoil of four relationships. The film avoids just wallowing in these emotions by weaving the couples together by the investigation of a suspicious death.
It's a film that will appeal more to those who have had some experience of life and can empathize with the feelings and experiences of the characters.

Thorns in the Garden
When I first saw this taut moody thriller, I found it absorbing, but I simply could not identify with the characters (which are, nevertheless, portrayed by an excellent ensemble cast). Why, I thought, doesn't an otherwise intelligent woman--a psychiatrist yet--who has wrecked her car, and has walked several kilometers down a dark lonely road to a pay-phone, call 999 (or its Australian equivalent)? And I found Anthony Lapaglia simply unappealing. That was then.

I have since watched the film several more times. As for my first complaint, I have come to understand the onslaught of hysteria in the physician who is in need of healing herself. As for Anthony Lapaglia, I have gotten used to him (The traditional handsome Hollywood hero he isn't!) and have come to admire him in the television show, "Without A Trace." Therefore I have cast aside my initial prejudice and now fully appreciate what an accomplished actor he is in "Lantana." Lapaglia is an excellent foil for Geoffrey Rush, who turns in a moving performance as the twice-bereaved Professor of Law.

The director presents a series of relationships that are as thorny and thick as the lantana hedges--which seem alive with shrilling cicadas--that run riot along the Sidney roadsides. He also subtly misdirects the attention of the audience, which may think it has cleverly intuited the solution to the mystery, but gradually realizes that it has been skillfully guided through the tangled Lantana maze and sent down the wrong garden path altogether.

Satisfying and somber
I'm not sure how much play this Australian movie received in the U.S. and Britain, but whatever it was it deserved more. In a great opening shot, it starts with the implication that there has been a murder, but it moves steadily into a study of people, basically four couples, and how they come together in ways that are deeply emotional and questioning. Anthony LaPaglia plays Leon Zat, a Sydney detective who is trying to find out who the body is and what happened. He's married, burned out, unhappy, with a lot of stuff ready to explode. He's having a joyless affair with a woman, but he loves his wife and kids. His wife sees the marriage falling apart and doesn't know what to do about it. She's been seeing a psychiatrist, but this woman has problems of her own...a daughter who was murdered and a husband who has become frozen emotionally.

I know, it sounds like some weekday soap. Believe me, it isn't. The actors are uniformily superb. Besides LaPaglia, there's Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hersey, and a number of Australian actors who should be better known in the U.S and Britain. If you only know LaPaglia from cop and gangster roles, TV crime shows and as the thick-headed hood/nephew in The Client, you're in for a revelation. As good as LaPaglia is, Rush matches him in a performance that is subtle, ambiguous and sad.

It's a somber movie. I recommend it highly. The DVD transfer is very good