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Herald rating: 3/5
Ray Lawrence's Lantana, an intelligent, Altmanesque drama that turned a police procedure into a razor-sharp dissection of human relationships, always seemed to be about more than met the eye.
His new film, Jindabyne, is accomplished and impressive but if it has a frustration, it's that finally it is less than it seems.
Lawrence and screenwriter Beatrix Christian have loaded too much into the plot delivered to them by American short story maestro Raymond Carver.
Four men, fishing in a remote spot in the mountains, discover the body of a murdered woman but wait two days to report it so as not to spoil their weekend.
Carver's story, So Much Water So Close To Home, set in the Pacific Northwest, inspired a song by Australian troubadour Paul Kelly and a segment of Robert Altman's 1993 film Short Cuts (all of which was based on Carver).
Both those versions were small and delicate, telling the story glancingly in allusive and mysterious fashion. And although the new film concentrates, like its predecessors, on the aftermath - the impact of the fateful weekend on a marriage - it opens out the story in ways that don't all work.
For a start, Jindabyne's killing is a murder without mystery. The killer is the first person we see, but the film's not about to catch him. Instead, many shots adopt his viewpoint: characters are constantly being stalked and watched. The intention, presumably, is to implicate us, but it feels like a cheap trick, a gratuitous piece of tension-raising.
Likewise, making the victim an Aboriginal woman adds a new layer of meaning - to do with the relationship of men to the land - that the film struggles to support. (The name and setting - Jindabyne is an instant 60s town built to replace one flooded by the Snowy River scheme - make the same point, though more subtly.) And when this aspect spawns a whole subplot about racial tension in town, the film becomes deliberate and plodding.
But the story's central idea remains and the film teases it out skilfully.
As Claire and Stewart, Linney (wonderful as always) and a suitably opaque Byrne work well together to create a dramatic and emotional hub for the story. The gathering storm in their marriage is portrayed with real emotional precision, even if the director's odd, repeated use of fading to black disrupts the rhythm. Linney, among the most skilful and self-effacing actors of her time, is outstanding.
Best, the film sits in its surroundings well: the ensemble cast is convincing and there is an eye for the small, convincing detail.
Meanwhile, the camera captures the sere landscapes and the glinting, rippling waters of the setting to evoke an eerily precise sense of place.
What it adds up to is a very good Australian film that fails only to the extent that it aims too high and too wide. It's less than it might have been because it's more than it should have been.
Cast: Laura Linney, Gabriel Byrne, Deborra-Lee Furness, John Howard, Leah Purcell, Stelios Yiakmis, Simon Stone
Director: Ray Lawrence
Running time: 123 mins
Rating: M, violence, offensive language
Verdict: Aussie adaptation of a familiar story tries to do too much but the main performances are terrific and it looks a treat
