Film Information
Lantana: Cast and Crew
Leon: Anthony LaPaglia
John: Geoffrey Rush
Valerie: Barbara Hershey
Sonja: Kerry Armstrong
Jane: Rachael Blake
Nik: Vince Colosimo
Paula: Daniela Farinacci
Patrick: Peter Phelps
Claudia: Leah Purcell
Pete: Glenn Robbins
Director: Ray Lawrence
Producer: Jan Chapman
Writer: Andrew Bovell (adapted from the screenplay Speaking in Tongues)
Executive Producers: Rainer Mockert, Mikail Borglund
Line Producer: Catherine Jarman
Director of Photography: Mandy Walker
Production Designer: Kim Buddee
Costume Designer: Margot Wilson
Editor: Karl Sodersten
Sound Designer: Susie Maizels U.K.
Casting: Sarah Beardsall
Music: Paul Kelly with Shane O'Mara, Steve Hadley, Bruce Haymes and Peter Luscombe.
AFI Awards- 2001
Best Film
Best Director: Ray Lawrence
Best Actor: Anthony LaPaglia
Best Actress: Kerry Armstrong
Best Supporting Actor: Vince Colosimo
Best Supporting Actress: Rachael Blake
Best Adapted Screenplay: Andrew Bovell
IF Awards 2001
Showtime IF Award for Best Feature Film: Lantana
Animal Logic Film IF Award for Best Direction: Ray Lawrence
In Style IF Award for Best Actress: Ensemble Cast of Lantana ( Barbara Hershey, Kerry Armstrong, Leah Purcell, Rachael Blake, Daniela Farinacci)
Rymill Wines IF Award for Best Actor: Anthony LaPaglia
Gray and Perkins IF Award for Best Script: Andrew Bovell
Release dates
The movie officially opened in Australia on Thursday 4th October 2001 after its World premier on opening night of the Sydney Film Festival, was voted most Popular Film at the 50th Melbourne International Film Festival and received a passionate response at the Brisbane International Film Festival. It opened nationwide on Thursday 18thOctober 2001.
10.9.2001
Lantana receives its International premiere as the closing night Gala at the 26th Toronto International Film Festival. (September 7-16).
The film was invited to the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado ( August 31st- September 3rd)
It was selected for competition in the San Sebastian International Film Festival (September 20th -29th)
It also opened the New York Cultural Film Festival- BAM (5th October)
1.10.2001
Lantana opens the Australian Film Festival at the Brooklyn Academy's Next Wave Down Under Festival in New York on October 5th.
2.10.2001
Andrew Bovell wins the Australian Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his adaptation of Speaking in Tongues which he reshaped for the screen renaming it Lantana.
9.10.2001
Lantana opens with a record breaking first weekend. Only open at 15 screens it earned an average of $28 770 per cinema. The total box office gross for 4 days was $431 563. By the end of the first week it was expected to have earned $ 750 000 including previews, unheard of for a limited release.
24.10.2001
The movie earns $ 1.1 million at the Australian box -office after being open nationwide for a week. That means a gross $2.4 million for two weeks.
4. 1.02
After 12 weeks on release Lantana has been seen by 1 million Australians and grossed over $9 million.
31.1.02
Lantana is released in nationwide New Zealand
( the film is on track to make $500 000)
Selected reviews- 2001 (taken from www.palace.net.au/lantana/)
"Easily the best Australian film of the year - if not many years - Lantana is a slow burn psychological drama with the works; an amazing story, a real adult mystery, and it will leave audiences thinking about it for days"
Shannon Harvey, The Sunday Times - Perth
Finally, an Australian thriller that lives up to it's hype...Go see it - you won't be disappointed
For Me
"A film of searching beauty and power that will stand, I believe, among the finest Australian films. Above all, Lantana is a triumph for it's actors....Few Australian films have woven such a powerful spell.....Sensitive and intelligent, adult in the best sense and never less than absorbing, Lantana is the sort of mature and confident entertainment that has all too rarely been made in this country"
Evan Williams, The Weekend Australian
" Lantana could be as diverse as The Piano was, it's superb, a movie of a kind rarely attempted by our movie makers. The story that unfolds is complex but always fascinating...this is a tantalizing film that offers characters and not caricature, unlike so much of the imported dross that fills our screens...It is a film that demands attention, but it's one that you won't forget quickly."
Des Partridge, Courier Mail - Brisbane
"Lantana is one of those movies that stays with you for hours after you've seen it. It's the second only feature from talented director Ray Lawrence, the guy who emerged from the world of advertising with Bliss in 1985, and post awards and accolades promptly went back there, waiting to find the perfect next project. Well Lantana's it - let's just hope that this time Mr. Lawrence stays out, in the light.
Playwright Andrew Bovell wrote Lantana's very original screenplay. Set around 4 marriages in various states of decay, Lantana explores human fallibility in all its intimate glory. But wait there's more - a missing person case layers intrigue on top of this introspection - it's a subtle stone cold whodunit made for adults.
Each member of Lantana's large ensemble cast is given the chance to really strut their stuff from - Anthony LaPaglia and Geoffrey Rush, to Kerry Armstrong and Rachel Blake. Lantana is gripping, compassionate, and a beautifully realised team effort."
4 1/2 stars Megan Spencer - JJJ radio
The best film of the (Toronto) Festival... this flawless Australian masterpiece is a detailed study of betrayal, human fraility and the profound complexities of relationships. Lantana is a sublime achievement, understated in its cinematic direction, a work in which the substance of character rises to the top. Performances are faultless, with LaPaglia delivering his finest, most intricate and subtle work to date. It's extraordinary to watch him as he digs beneath the surface. He is matched by the emotionally resonant work of Kerry Armstrong, the brilliantly understated performance of Rush, and the other fine performances by Lawrences's remarkable cast. Beautifully written by Andrew Bovell and assuredly, honestly directed by Lawrence, Lantana is a haunting, moving, incomparable masterwork, deserving of all the critical acclaim bestowed upon it.
Paul Fischer, filmmonthly.com
Finding out more about Lantana
When I typed Lantana into the search engine the only website I could find was www.palace.net.au/lantana/. This is where I found all the cast and crew names, bibliographies of the director and main characters and the reviews that I have copied and pasted into this document. Despite the evidence that Lantana was received well overseas this appears to be the only website dedicated to this very successful film. The website provides you with all the information that you need to know about the movie and cast and crew as well as the acclaim that it has received both in Australia and Internationally.
Lantana- a critical analysis
Lantana is a noxious weed that intertwines itself with other plants and eventually smothering them. Writer Andrew Bovell uses the plant to represent the intertwined relationships within the movie. Although the lantana bush looks beautiful with its flowers in reality it is dense and spiky and this represents how the relationships all look fine on the surface in reality there are many factors that contribute to their failings. The bush is seen in the opening scene of the movie and becomes a common motif throughout the movie as the opening scene has the lantana bush, cicadas singing and then body- legs and laddered stockings. This scene is repeated throughout the movie and becomes the motif for the tangled relationships within the movie.
"A woman disappears
Four marriages are drawn into a tangled web of
Love, deceit, sex and death.
Not all of them will survive."[1]
Lantana tells the story of eight couples who are joined through sex, betrayal and death. The four marriages are between Leon and Sonja, Jane and Pete, Nik and Paula, and Valerie and John. The story shows the way the relationships are intertwined through these factors. Valerie is the one that connects them all although this is not obvious in the beginning and the audience identifies with Leon as the main protagonist as he seems to be the one connecting the relationships through his role as detective in Valerie's disappearance.
We first meet Leon at the beginning of his one nightstand with Jane, which becomes two nights. We then meet his wife Sonja at the Latin dancing class which she has encouraged to re-ignite passion in their marriage and this is ultimately where their marriage goes off the tracks as it is here that Leon meets Jane. Leon is the anti-hero in that is the typical Australian male; strong and unable to express his feelings. We run with Leon throughout the movie experiencing the situation mainly through his emotions or lack of, he is a man at the edge and this is evident in the way we see him beat up a suspect for being a drug dealer. This scene is the first where Leon's emotional state becomes apparent and we see that he is suffering and does not know how to express it. His state becomes more apparent when he confronts Patrick and his partner, Claudia, says; "your marriage is falling apart and so are you."
The reason the audience identifies with Leon because of his apparent connection to all of the characters. He comes into contact with all the characters at some point in the movie. He is having an affair with Jane who is separated from Pete who Leon meets in a chance encounter in a bar, he is married to Sonja who is seeing Valerie who is a psychologist married to John who is the first suspect in her disappearance. Leon passes Nik when he leaves Jane's house at the end of their affair and Nik is married to Paula and they are Jane's next door neighbours. Through this Leon appears to be the main protagonist within the movie. The real connection turns out to be Valerie as her disappearance shows the deceit within the marriages. The Lantana plant represents how entwined the relationships are without the characters realising it although with the disappearance of Valerie this becomes clear.
This is a twisted screenplay and before we learn too much about Leon the character view point changes and we meet Sonia talking to Valerie about her marriage. Once again the viewpoint changes and we learn about Valerie and the lost of her daughter, Eleanor, who was murdered eighteen months previously. We then meet John, Valerie's husband, and we see the tension between the characters. Bovell does not let us get close to any of the characters until we have meet them and experienced some of their pain and how twisted the relationships are. Lawrence's direction of the twists is shown when he introduces John and Patrick as the unknown antagonists who do not appear to have any connection to the characters already met. The placement of John and Patrick to the left and right respectively of Valerie emphasises her reaction. The fact that they seem to arrive soon after each other does not seem important until subsequently when Valerie's suspicions about Patrick having an affair with John become known and it becomes more important when Leon makes the same assumption during his investigation. However the audience are kept in the dark about the true identity of Patrick's married lover which adds to the dramatic tension of the movie.
As the story unfolds we learn more about the characters and their lives and relationships. We see the relationship between Paula and Jane is already tenuous as Paula does not trust her around Nik and this wariness is well founded when Jane reports Nik throwing the shoe into the bush to the police thereby destroying her relationship with Paula. However the main destruction of their friendship is when Jane tidies their house while they are at the police station and Paula screams across the fence at her' " you've got no right, no fucking right." The audience is given insight into the marriage of Paula and Nik as although they are the ones facing the problem of living on a single income and the investigation into Nik they are the only couple with trust between them which all the other couples lack. This is shown most clearly when Paula goes to see Nik at the police station. Nik is in all black and is unshaven compared to Paula in all white, the colours denoting good and evil. At first she is unsure about going to him but when he tells her that he didn't touch Valerie she goes to him and holds him. This unconditional acceptance makes Leon uncomfortable as it lacking from his marriage and he leaves the room.
The contrast between Nik and Leon is shown in this scene, as Sonja already doubts Leon fidelity yet Paula trusts Nik implicitly just on words. The contrast is shown again when John asks Leon what holds his marriage together, "loyalty...love...maybe habit, sometimes passion... our kids." There is no mention of trust as Leon has already lied to John about being faithful after which John confesses that he was unfaithful as his marriage was held together by grief. Bovell's emphasis on Leon's failings either endears him to the audience or makes him less of a 'hero' it is left up to the audience to interpret.
The true protagonist of the movie is also left up to the audience and whom the audience identifies with most, as the characters are worlds apart. Leon has what every person wants, a job, a family and a loving wife the perfect life, according to his partner Claudia who is single. Sonja is middle-aged but she is happy but unsure about her marriage she is beautiful and worldly but lacks passion. Valerie is a successful psychologist but because of the tragic loss of her daughter she is needy and fragile and also unsure about her marriage as is shown in her reaction to Patrick's story about his affair with a married man. Worlds apart is Paula a working mother of three struggling to support her family on her income. Nik is the stereotypical unemployed male who drinks a bit and in everyone's opinion except his wife capable of leaving the straight and narrow; he is always seen either walking the baby or fixing the car and is characterised by these actions. Bovell presents stereotypes and then sets out to disapprove through the complexities in the characters. Bovell does this to emphasise the overall thematic idea. " In formalistic narratives, the author is overtly manipulative sometimes scrambling the chronology of the story or heightening or restructing events [or characters] to maximise a thematic idea"[2]. This means that we bring our own expectations and knowledge to the movie so Bovell is destroying these in order to bring the audience into the movie. In the case of Lantana we bring our previous knowledge of stereotypes; the cheating husband etc and Bovell disapproves these.
Another significant part of Lantana is the unresolved issues,
"Instead of establishing clear goals, developing motivation and coherence, and resolving the tension that is touched upon in the early part of the film,"[3]
Another approach is taken. Lawrence highlights the dysfunctional relationships that occur in the first part of the film, not supplying a steady flow of narrative cues is what makes the film work and draws the audience deeper into the movie. This technique of 'withholding the carrot' does not allow for any "hypothesis-forming activity" in the "initial exposition" of the movie which makes it different from Hollywood Classical cinema. This coupled with the unspoken emotions of the characters helps it be a success. An example is when Jane waits in her car outside the police station waiting for Leon; when she sees Leon and Claudia she gets out the car as if she were meant to be there. Although the characters shrug off the awkwardness of the moment it is clear in Leon's hesitation in introducing Jane to Claudia, he is unsure how to introduce. The picture behind of a girl emphasises the awkwardness as it as though they are being stared at. Another memorable scene is Leon meeting Pete in a bar and Pete saying "what are you a cop or something?" to which Leon replies "as a matter of fact I am". This is juxtaposed with Nik telling Paula about Jane inviting him in for coffee. Then back to Pete and Leon standing side by side at the urinal and Leon telling him about running into the jogger and breaking the jogger's nose. This conflicts with what he has told both Sonja and Claudia. This again contrasts the characters, as the one you expect to lie, Nik, is completely truthful with his wife whereas Leon lies to his wife. It shows Nik as an innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time but Leon has problems he "can't feel anymore."
In conclusion the audience sees the four couples through the dark representation of the Lantana bush. We see the characters grow and come to deal with their failings although they all have guilt to work through. Leon has to work through the guilt of his affair, Nik of not saying anything to the police about picking Valerie up and scaring her accidentally and John because he was home when Valerie called and not wanting to speak to her. Valerie's death brings out the worst of the relationships including her own. Nik and Paula continue happily; Pete and Valerie continue their separation and John is forced to come to terms with both his daughter and his wife's deaths the last time we see him is on a cliff top looking peaceful as though he has come to terms with everything. Patrick is forced to see that he was nothing to the married man he watches him happy with his family and his exclusion is emphasised by the rain and the tightly framed shot. Claudia finally meets her mystery man and the colours of the shot-re-emphasise the fact that there is hope. Leon is forced to confront his guilt and emotions; he confesses his affair to Sonja. The audience is kept in suspense about the state of Leon's marriage up until the point that he listens to Sonja's tape to find out whether she still loves him. It is at this point that the floodgates open- "Do you still love him?" (Valerie) there is a pause and the audience holds its breath with Leon, " yeah I still love him"- and Leon finally releases his pent up emotion through tears. Leon finally faces his demons and the shot of him lying on his bed fully clothed emphasises his exhaustion and his surrender. Sonja sees this as a sign and her decision to lie with him is the first step to healing their broken marriage.
Overall Lantana is made realistic by the characters which buck the conventions. They are multi-layered and the result of hard work.
"The screenplay published here is the culmination of a decade of hard work. [Says Bovell] At the time of writing the play I was very interested in the notion that different points of view might glean quite different and sometimes quite contrary meaning from the same incident."[4]
The result is an exploration into very ordinary characters that leaves the audience with the feeling they have explored some hitherto unknown part of themselves due to the actions of the characters.
References
Bovell. A, 2001, ed. Katherine Brisbane, Lantana Screenplay, Currency Press, New South Wales.
Gianetti. L, 1999, ed. Charlyce Jones Owen, Understanding Movies Eighth edition, Prentice-Hall International, London.
Mcfarlane. B, Mayer. G, 1992, New Australian Cinema Sources and Parallels in American and British Films,Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom.
[1] www.palace.net.au/lantana/
[2] Gianetti. L, 1999, ed Charlyce Jones Owen, Understanding Movies Eighth edition, Prentice-Hall International, London, pg 327
[3] Mcfarlane.B, Mayer. G, 1992, New Australian Cinema Sources and Parallels in American and British Films, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, pg 54
[4] Bovell. A, 2001, ed. Katherine Brisbane, Lantana Screenplay, Currency Press, New South Wales, pg 9