Jindabyne film review

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JINDABYNE

Rapturously received at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, Jindabyne is the latest film from Australian director Ray Lawrence, whose previous effort Lantana was a hit around the world in 2003. Upscale audiences who flocked to Lantana should reappear to boost the fortunes of this sombre thriller.

Although defining Jindabyne purely as a thriller may be a misnomer: its mix of social and personal drama together with a supernatural element and a serial killer thrown in possibly puts it into a genre all of its own.

As Claire and Stewart Kane, Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney's fading marriage is at the fulcrum of the drama: once bright young things, they pace solemnly around their outback house full of unspoken middle-aged angst. Their marital standoff is interrupted by Stewart's annual fishing trip with his drinking buddies: a not-unlike-Deliverance group who are keen to escape their own personal dilemmas.

Not long into the trip, the group make a grisly discovery and it is their decision over what to do that will have far-reaching consequences. Once they return to civilisation, their actions will prove hard to forget.

It's likely that some audiences will find this captivating and fascinating stuff, but others may find the ponderous pace and tortured expressions rather hard to bear. As in Lantana, Lawrence examines the effects of a specific incident on a tightly-knit group and sits back to observe the slowly-unravelling drama - arguably one which unfolds too slowly.

Paul Hurley