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Video: Getting to the root of 'Lantana'
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 23, 2002
Lantana (R)
[Photo: Lion’s Gate Films]
Anthony LaPaglia plays Leon to Kerry Armstrong’s Sonja in Lantana.
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Detective Leon Zat (Anthony LaPaglia) investigates the murder of a psychologist (Barbara Hershey) who was counseling Zat's wife (Kerry Armstrong) on her husband's infidelity. That's just the first layer of sexual tension and intrigue in Ray Lawrence's riveting film. Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush co-stars as the victim's husband, whose personal life is haunted by the tragedy that made his wife famous. An uncommonly mature drama, made outside the United States, of course. First impressions: "Lawrence's film is a whodunit, though it's more adept at wondering why these people are doing this to themselves. LaPaglia (an Aussie despite his usual New York accents) has the most volatile character, unleashing Leon's personal and professional frustrations in a wide arc . . . a bold performance that earned one of the film's eight Australian Film Institute awards.
"The screenplay and Lawrence's somber style wallow in more angst than necessary, but with actors working at this level, it's a minor problem. As in Monster's Ball, the erotic passages are more pathetic than titillating because of the desperation under the skin. Lantana is an ambitious dive into emotional depths that fascinates while it also repulses, a lovely ugliness haunting a viewer for days afterward."
Second thoughts: Banished quickly from theaters, deserves a close look on home video.
Rental audience: Art-film patrons.
Rent it if you enjoy: Robert Altman's multicharacter tapestries, especially Short Cuts, or his imitators such as Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia).
Sidewalks of New York (R)
[Photo: Paramount Classics]
Edward Burns, right, takes a stab at being Woody Allen with Sidewalks of New York. Rosario Dawson is at left.
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Six romantically dysfunctional New Yorkers cross paths in writer-director Edward Burns' homage to all things Woody Allen. Burns plays Tommy, a TV producer rebounding from a failed love affair with the assistance of Maria (Rosario Dawson) and Annie (Heather Graham), whose husband (Stanley Tucci) is cheating with a teenager (Brittany Murphy), who has the hots for a musician (David Krumholtz) who recently dumped Maria. Got all that?
First impressions: "The movie is funny without being hilarious, touching but not tearful, and articulate in the way that Burns is articulate, by nibbling earnestly around an idea as if afraid that the core has seeds. Not a lot is at stake. We would not be surprised if in three years, an emotional reassignment has taken place, and all of the new couples, like all of the old ones, have been thrown on the ash heap of romantic history." (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)
Second thoughts: Delayed after Sept. 11 and released with little fanfare to indifference.
Rental audience: Edward Burns' fans. Both of you.
Rent it if you enjoy: The Brothers McMullen, She's the One.
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