LANTANA

directed by Ray Lawrence

starring Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey and Anthony LaPaglia
reviewed by Gordon Preece

My green-thumbed father-in-law informs me that the pretty "lantana" with which we’re adorning our beautifully unkempt Melbourne gardens is a domesticated, genetically engineered variety; different to the gnarled and almost impenetrable weed of this film’s northern climes.The lantana in northern Australia is a dense, twisted undergrowth that hides things. It in some ways represents the way the ambiguity and wildness of the bush is only just kept at bay by our civilised and domesticated ways (I’m reminded of McCubbin’s famous triptych Pioneers and his Lost).

The flower serves as a metaphor for this film’s several marriages floundering under the weight of wild passion (sexual and violent) and civilised dispassion. Some come through. Others collapse, calamitously. About others we’re left wondering if they’ll make it.

Lantana is a film about trust, love and loss. The thin tissue of human trust is stretched to breaking point by adultery and betrayal; by catastrophic loss and curious coincidence. Early on we see a psychiatrist (Barbara Hershey) launching her book about her murdered daughter, pontificating about the crucial role of trust. Her own marriage, however, has succumbed to the loss of it. Her husband (Geoffrey Rush) confesses that ‘sometimes love isn’t enough’. They grieve alone, unable to connect, unable to make love. She finds herself taunted by a gay client (Peter Phelps), cast out of a position of professional helper and becomes a desperate 'helpee'. Eventually, her own inability to trust proves, literally, fatal.

Other couples, too, are caught in a web of sexual deceit and circumstance. Coincidence occurs regularly in this small North Shore community, but more believably than in the comparable American relationship epic, Magnolia. A detective (Anthony LaPaglia) and his wife (Kerry Armstrong) end up awkwardly in the same Latin dance class as a woman (recently separated) with whom he’s had a one-night stand. This represents something of the lost intimacy his wife and he in their own ways want to recapture. The Latin dance, in contrast to postmodern patterns of individualistic dancing or non-dancing (which can be seen as analogous to the lack of definition in relationships), provides paths and rituals for negotiating the ambiguities of intimacy, inching towards it by degrees.

The detective investigates the psychiatrist’s disappearance and ends up listening to tapes of her clients’ sessions, including his wife’s disclosures about their marriage and her suspicions about him, and her desire for disclosure. More significant than the sex is the secrecy. I’m reminded of Stanley Hauerwas’ story of a friend whose fantasies all come true when propositioned by an airline hostess on a business trip. But his first thought was ‘what will I tell my wife about why I’m late home?’ And when he realised he couldn’t lie about something trivial like that, he realised he couldn’t commit adultery. It’s that kind of transparent trust that makes the film’s unsophisticated, working-class couple’s relationship work, despite the temptation and suspicion of the next-door neighbour (Blake) and the massive cloud of suspicion over the unemployed husband’s head.

Lantana is a story about the virtues that sustain relationships and the vices that sap their life. Yet it does not labour under the weight of a sermonic morality or exposition. The characters, swept along by Andrew Bovell’s wonderful screenplay of his internationally produced play, Speaking in Tongues, and filled out by a superb cast, carry lightly their emotional and moral weight. The attention to detail and precise pacing by director Ray Lawrence, long lost to the advertising world since his 1985 debut, Bliss, will hopefully be seen more regularly on our large screens.

Lantana is a very Australian film, but one about a contemporary, sophisticated and urbane Australia. Its themes have universal resonance, unlike many other ‘quirky Aussie films’. It compares more than adequately with recent American films like Magnolia or American Beauty which deal with similar themes of suburban alienation. It’s no exaggeration to say it is one of the great Australian films of recent times and one deserving international acclaim.

Gordon Preece is Director of the Ridley College Centre of Applied Christian Ethics and Commissioning Editor, Zadok Perspectives.