Andrew Bovell

An amazingly powerful play - part family saga, part mystery - mystical and surreal. After seeing it in production, I could not stop thinking about it for days.

This is a voluptuou essya about love, pain and the whole damn thing. The cop's torment is palpable. A remarkably thoughtful drama, SIT makes it clear not only how hard to come by any emotional comfort is in this life, but more important, why we can't give up on the struggle. Bovell constructs a vivid pastiche of human foibles, nicely flavored with a touch of suspense and some well-timed jolts of humor. In the end it's a terrifically entertaining play, if not quite so profound as the makers show more might wish. For the briefest of moments, someone not paying attention might mistake it for a mystery. -- The film is actually an examination of human interaction. There's some genuine suspense in it, including one unbearably tense moment that is worthy of Hitchcock. But the text's least unnerving aspect is the way in which it suggests true happiness may be impossible to regain once you've lost it. Hear, hear... While viewers who expect conventional suspense may be disappointed overall, it does succeed on a smaller, more intimate scale. show less

The reason the film's called "Lantana" is because lantana is a tangled shrub common in Australia, which represents the entanglements of the lives of the characters. It also symbolizes marriage since lantana has a sweet but bitter smell: it's beautiful with its flowers, but has "stings"; its branches weave together in a complicated way and in the story a woman is caught in the complexity of it. This story of complicated relationships is haunting, realistic and subtle in the way that it's show more presented and captures beautifully the quiet despair of ordinary suburban people who are trying to cope with their problems whilst also having to meet the routine demands of their daily lives. Top class performances (especially from LaPaglia and Hershey) and some beautiful photography complement the melancholy mood of the piece perfectly and there are also a couple of Edward Hopper inspired scenes when Leon meets Jane's estranged husband in a bar and in a kitchen where he has a conversation with his sidekick Claudia (Leah Purcell). Overall, "Lantana" is a thoughtful and serious movie with well-developed characters that'll resonate most strongly with mature audiences. What the movie teaches us is that we are more normal than we think we are. And that we make things complicated though deceiving ourselves and others, through refusing to reflect on our relationships. show less