965. LANTANA (2001)

Running Time: 121 minutes
Directed By: Ray Lawrence
Written By: Andrew Bovell from play Speaking in Tongues
Main Cast: Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey, Kerry Armstrong, Rachael Blake
Click here to view the trailer

LOVE IS THE GREATEST MYSTERY

"Bergman Week" will conclude tomorrow, but I figured it couldn't hurt to take a day's break from my tribute to Ingmar and take in something else. I let my wife do the picking, as she took to my stack of Netflix movies and pulled out "Lantana", one that we both thoroughly enjoyed.

The plot of "Lantana" involves many characters, using interweaving plots to tell a fabulous tale. Leon Zat (LaPaglia) is a police officer who is cheating on his wife Sonja (Armstrong). His lover is Jane (Blake), a woman he met in a dance class that he and his wife have been taking. When Leon isn't involved in his extra-marital relationships, he's a hard-nosed detective, ready to put the boots to anyone who is doing wrong. Besides the affair, he's not the most loving husband in the first place, being very cold with Sonja and snapping at her without a moment's notice. Sonja has been seeing a therapist behind Leon's back, Valerie Somers (Hershey), who does her job well, despite having the pain of her daughter's murder on her mind. Valerie is married to John (Rush), an intelligent lawyer, who is also very cold with Valerie and who also seems to be hiding something - perhaps an affair of his own? The film opens with a shot of a dead woman lying in a thicket of brush. Who is the dead woman? How did she die? The film goes full throttle from there.

This shouldn't really take long. Yes, I enjoyed the film. However, do I agree that it's one of the 1001 films that I think deserved to be labeled a "must see"? Eh, not really. My biggest complaint with the film is that it really lacked something to kick it up into that upper echelon of fabulous films. It's as if grandma made a pot of her delicious, homemade stew, but forgot to add salt. I'm really not sure what it needed, but my first notion is that a more intense score could only have helped to pull the movie through the very few, lazier moments. The score that was in place just didn't have the 'OOMPH' that it should have had for a movie about such intense topics as love, trust, betrayal, murder and human relationships. Although, maybe there was something else that just wasn't quite right, but as I write this I can't put my finger on anything else that was wrong with "Lantana".

The aspect that really deserves admiration here is the magnificent script, filled with twists, turns and curve balls. Nowadays there are so many filmmaker's throwing in twists & turns for the sake of surprising their audiences, even if those twists & turns don't make sense. Here, when all is said and done, all of the curve balls that have been lobbed make complete & total sense. Nothing is added in for the sake of screwing with the audience and nothing feels the least bit contrived or hokey. We, the audience, are given the crucial elements on a need to know basis, as we watch the tale unfold and as various questions pop up. We knew we'll get the answers in due time and that's what makes "Lantana" exciting - knowing that at any moment we could be given a crucial answer to an itching question. As far as the acting goes, everyone did a fine job, but a special kudos to Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia (of Cold Case fame) for really showing up to flew their chops.

RATING: 7.5/10 Perhaps as time goes by, I'll realize that this film wasn't missing anything and it was even better than my rating suggests, but for now, that's the rating and something WAS missing.

MOVIES WATCHED: 415
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 586

March 22, 2012 10:17pm