LANTANA

Review: A young woman named Valerie disappears, while we see a relationship of four couples unravel. Set in suburban Sydney.
Director: Ray Lawrence
Actors: Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Rachael Blake, Kerry Armstrong, Manu Bennett, Lionel Tozer, Glenn Suter, Leah Purcell and Barbara Hershey
Year: 2001
Genre: Drama, Mystery and Romance
Conclusion: 3/5
This is a very well acted film. Geoffrey Rush is fantastic in everything he does. One thing I liked is that he doesn’t dominate the whole film. It is not all about him but it was lovely to see him when the cameras were back on him. The name Lantana is a name of a tropical shrub that, transplanted to Sydney, prospered and became a nuisance. I did think that it moved from scene to scene very quickly and was very well edited. In the late Roger Ebert’s review he has stated that “this is like Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia”, 1999 in the way it shows the lives of strangers joined by unsuspected connections”. This has themes in it such as love, hope, betrayal, deceit, sex and death.