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A wet night in Melbourne - the perfect time to enjoy a film at the Nova in Carlton ... well, it seems everyone else thought so too. For the second time, our planned viewing of Lantana was thwarted by a sold out Saturday night session. This time, however, (without the sights and sounds of the Lygon St. Festa to distract us), we decided to stick it out and wait for a later session. (Against all odds, we managed to find a cafe on Lygon St to fill in the time between sessions ;-)

I have talked with several people who have seen this film (recently voted the most popular film at Melbourne's International Film Festival) and wondered about its name. Some have guessed of a latin dancing link; others simply haven't bothered to try and figure it out. Luckily for me, the mystery of the film's name never was; in the opening scene, a friend next to me made some throw away comment about having "one of those Lantana plants" in her backyard. The toxic Lantana plant is used as a recurring image through the film, perhaps as a reflection of the toxic and destructive nature of the deception and betrayal portrayed in the film.

Lantana begins with a vast array of individual characters and plotlines which are slowly and delicately woven together throughout the course of the film. The apparently random nature of the people and tales presented to us gradually take on a sense of place as we delve deeper into the connections and relationships between these strangers and their experiences.

One intriguing consequence of this delving is the evolution seen in the nature of the characters' relationships; initially benevolent and comforting, many of the relationships morph into something intensely deceitful, claustrophobic and uncomfortable. Much of the length of Lantana is spent exploring, with quite astonishing depth and realism, the progression of the complex webs of love, trust and fidelity between its impressive cast of central characters.

Throughout the film, Ray Lawrence, the director of Lantana, manages to control our exposure to information with such an artful manner that we are inevitably drawn further and further into the film's fabric. His mastery of pulling back at key points leaves us dangling and tantalised until he feels the time is right to reveal more, and bring us further into the folds of the film.

Without giving too much of the plot away, the film is most succinctly described in the following four lines (taken from Palace Films, the distributer of Lantana):

"A woman disappears Four marriages are drawn into a tangled web of love, deceit, sex and death. Not all of them will survive A mystery for grown ups."

Lantana is undeniably a fascinating film which provides a haunting, believable and perfectly crafted view of contemporary Australian society. Make time to see it.