LANTANA

To sum up the plot of director Ray Lawrence's 'Lantana' is to run the risk of doing a great disservice to the film. When spoken of as a series of events, 'Lantana' is little more than a detective story, a whodunit in which we learn about the victim and the law enforcers in turn - the equal of nearly any episodic crime show on television.

Thankfully, 'Lantana' is about more than the events that take place within it. It's a film that trusts and relies on a glance as much as a murder, a nod of the head as much as a screaming match. The story examines its characters' lives until there is nowhere left to dig, their emotions and secrets painfully raw. There are no good or bad guys in 'Lantana,' only complex mixtures of both. In a uniformly exceptional cast, Anthony LaPaglia and Kerry Armstrong are especially successful at playing well-rounded human beings instead of 'types.' In a film at its core about trust, LaPaglia, Armstrong, and the rest aren't afraid to play with the audience's own trust. The story's explorations of love and fidelity may not be pleasant, but they are somehow beautiful.

'Lantana' is also visually beautiful. The composition of each frame of the film seems to have been planned in exacting detail, and camera movement is nearly always - if the movement of a camera can be said to be so - tender. All of this is true without drawing attention to its accomplishments. The pictures always serve the story without stylizing it.

Though the script increasingly relies on coincidence to make the plot work as it chugs along, the coincidences here are entirely earned. It takes no stretch of the imagination to see that these lives are intertwined by more than location or circumstance.

The last few minutes threaten to tie up all the film's frayed ends into too neat a bow, but that mistake is (narrowly) avoided. And while no one quite lives happily after, we feel okay leaving these characters when the credits roll. When all is said and done, 'Lantana' is crime drama, a detective solving a murder. That the death is the least enthralling aspect of a film that still trusts subtlety and complexity lifts 'Lantana' beyond any genre.

YES (8/10)