Jindabyne 2006

Ray Lawrence’s powerful follow-up to Lantana comes loaded with praise from its première at Cannes. Like the earlier film, it’s a richly populated psychological drama with a mysterious death at its centre. Lawrence based his film on a short story by Raymond Carver (which Altman also used in Short Cuts) about four men on a fishing trip who find the body of a murdered woman – and carry on fishing. He uses the fallout from their behaviour to explore the fissures within a small community and examine the painful rifts between these men and the women in their lives. Heading a superb cast, Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney are perfectly paired as an imperfectly matched couple. The malaise so vividly dramatised here is loaded: in John Howard’s ‘relaxed and comfortable’ Australia, not apologising for bad stuff you can’t change is upheld as the plain common sense of the ordinary bloke. — BG

“A stunning Australian film... The movie is impeccably acted and its narrative progression superbly managed by Lawrence: for Rover two hours, I was on the edge of my seat.” — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian