Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.
Ray Lawrence is incredibly frustrating as a director. His first feature film, Bliss, was released in 1985. His second, Lantana, was released in 2001. Let me put that into a little bit of perspective for you. When Ray Lawrence’s first film came out, I was graduating from high school. When his second film came out, I had been married for 10 years. If Lantana is any indication, Lawrence has a steady eye and a great aptitude for storytelling. How frustrating then that his output is something like a film every 10 years. It’s as if he went to the Terrence Malick school of film releases. We can hope that eventually he’ll hit a massive creative spurt like Malick, who currently has three films in post.
Regardless, Lantana is one of that strange subsets of dramas that concerns groups of people loosely connected who suddenly find themselves dramatically influencing each other’s lives. The most obvious comparison here is with something like Short Cuts or Magnolia, and those two are the ones most commonly cited when looking at Lantana. There’s a pseudo-Short Cuts connection also in that Lawrence’s third film, Jindabyne, is a fuller exploration of one of the stories used in Altman’s film. Regardless, what we have here is an event that affects the lives of four married and divorced couples. For me, that means a very difficult summary in trying to keep it all straight.
