Review of Lantana

This is an excellent film, with great characters and surprising twists. The movie opens with Valerie dead, lying in the thorny brush known locally as lantana - a metaphor, of course, for what life is like for the characters in the tangled plot. Valerie Somers is played by Barbara Hershey, and her husband John Knox by Geoffrey Rush. Anthony LaPaglia plays the police detective Leon Zat investigating her death. We see Valerie and John in flashbacks, showing a deteriorating relationship, and we see Leon in the present, cheating on his wife. Although none of the characters knows each other, their lives are intertwined nonetheless. It's a thicket of relationships that scratches and draws blood.

LaPaglia and Rush are outstanding. John is a major suspect, as all husbands are in the deaths of their wives, and John and Leon spar as the investigation shows the bad blood between John and Valerie. We learn, finally, that John is factually innocent, but he is morally guilty of her death all the same. Leon at first sneers at John and his naked emotion, but events turn on Leon, wrenching from him his manly self esteem.

This is an adult film, dealing with adult themes. No action, no gunfights, no superheroes. Just us humans muddling through. Director Ray Lawrence and writer Andrew Bovell give us much to chew over, moments of understanding, and finally acceptance of our condition.