Lantana
(DVD) 

Based on Andrew Bovell's stage play "Speaking in Tongues."

Special features: Trailer (2 min.); The nature of Lantana [featurette] (25 min.).

Director of photography, Mandy Walker ; camera, David Williamson ; production designer, Kim Buddee ; costume designer, Margot Wilson ; editor, Karl Sodersten ; music, Paul Kelly with Shane O'Mara, Steve Hadley, Bruce Haymes, Peter Luscome.

Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey, Kerry Armstrong, Rachael Blake, Vince Colosimo, Russell Dykstra, Daniela Farinacci, Peter Phelps, Leah Purcell, Glenn Robbins.

Originally produced as an Australian motion picture in 2001.

Lantana: a noxious and troublesome weed with dense and spiky undergrowth, sometimes cultivated for its colorful, aromatic flowers (film website). Like the plant, this film is a thicket: lovely and sweet smelling on its surface, dense and thorny beneath. In Lantana, a quartet of married couples from different strata of urban Australian life--wealthy Valerie and John, the middle-class Zats, working-class Jane and her estranged husband Pete, and struggling, just barely working-class Nik and Paula--are connected by psychiatrist Valerie, whose disappearance is the event around which these couples lives begin to revolve. The delicately layered storyline reminds viewers of three essential truths about human existence: No one is exactly what he or she seems; actions generate ripples that reach far beyond the actions themselves; and life does go on, no matter what, but it is never the same as before. Before what? Before everything.

MPAA rating: Rated R for language and sexuality.

DVD; 5.1 Dolby digital sound; widescreen presentation, 2.35:1 aspect ratio, enhanced for 16x9 televisions.

In English with optional subtitles in English or Spanish.

Australian Film Institute: 2001, AFI Award Best Actor in a Leading Role (Anthony LaPaglia); Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Vince Colosimo); Best Actress in a Leading Role (Kerry Armstrong); Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Rachael Blake); Best Direction (Ray Lawrence); Best Film (Jan Chapman); Best Screenplay Adapted from Another Source (Andrew Bovell); Screenwriting Prize (Andrew Bovell)