A very long time in the wilderness

It's been 15 long years since Ray Lawrence was feted by the film industry.
But he's about to make a comeback, writes Garry Maddox.

Fifteen years ago, Ray Lawrence was the toast of the Australian Film Institute awards. His debut feature, an adventurous adaptation of Peter Carey's novel Bliss, collected three of the major prizes including best film, best director and best adapted screenplay.

Flash forward to this week. The AFI awards are on again and Lawrence is directing another film in the streets of Sydney. Lantana features a blue-chip cast of Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey, Kerry Armstrong and Rachael Blake.

What's extraordinary is that Lantana is Lawrence's first film since Bliss. Despite the awards and the acclaim for his debut, the director was unable to get another feature into production until he teamed with producer Jan Chapman for this adaptation of Andrew Bovell's play Speaking in Tongues.

"It wasn't my choosing," says Lawrence of his long spell between films. "And it wasn't for want of trying. I guess all the things I wanted to do, not a lot of other people did."

He is speaking during a break in filming at a Pyrmont hall. He's directing a scene in which a 40-something cop (LaPaglia) is shaken when he sees his wife (Armstrong) with his lover (Blake) at a Latin dance class. It's one of many scenes that focus on the emotional complexities of contemporary relationships.

Since Bliss, Lawrence has been developing other films while directing commercials in the United States and Europe. His first go at a post-Bliss feature was an attempt to make Tracks, based on Robyn Davidson's book about crossing Australian desert by camel. Then there were two screenplays with novelist Robert Drewe. With Chapman as producer, he tried to get up Tim Winton's The Riders with a screenplay by Bovell. All without success.

"It's been frustrating at times but I've always been hopeful," says Lawrence. "I reached a point after we got the money for this [of thinking] this could well be my last film. I can't go on for another 15 years - or another five years [waiting for financiers]. It just wears you out. Making a film is so much easier than trying to interest people in giving you the finance to make it."

While trying to get The Riders off the ground, Lawrence went along to a production of Speaking in Tongues. "I went along just to be supportive and really liked it. In fact, I saw it three times," he said.

Lawrence was so impressed that he wanted to turn the play into a film. Bovell, who co-wrote Strictly Ballroom and Head On, began writing the screenplay.

"I'm really interested in the struggle that we all have getting on with each other, the struggle of the relationship," says Lawrence. "Man-woman, man-man, whatever. This film is a celebration of the struggle that we all have to co-exist, to love each other."

Assembling a strong cast was one of the keys to carrying off what he calls an ensemble film. "What we were trying to do was find couples, because that's what it's about."

LaPaglia, who has now made six Australian films, including Looking for Alibrandi, since returning for the first time from New York, likens the film to American Beauty for its suburban setting. His character, Leon Zat, leads the audience through the film as he investigates a woman's disappearance.

"They've all done a lot of theatre," says Lawrence of his cast. "We not only rehearsed the whole thing but we had a reading of the whole story and we had the crew as an audience. What that did was connect the crew to the cast.

"Because I thought this was going to be my last film, I thought I'm going to make this interesting for everybody. Every time we interviewed a crew member, I said you have to personalise this story otherwise you're just going to be a technician."

Jan Chapman, whose films as producer include The Piano, Holy Smoke, Love Serenade and the upcoming Walk the Talk, says Lantana has similarities to the ensemble dramas of Robert Altman and Woody Allen.

"It has interweaving storylines about a common theme," Chapman says. "The theme to me is trust in relationships, whether this is ever really possible."

For his part, Lawrence talks about the influence of Ken Loach. "I start my day as Ken Loach and I finish it as Homer Simpson," he says with a smile halfway through the eight-week shoot. "As the day wears on, you sort of realise you're running in front of a train."

The way the director describes it, Lantana seems like the antidote to his work in making commercials.

"Having worked in commercials for so long, where the theme is 'You're not blonde enough, you're not rich enough, you're not thin enough', this is an opportunity to put the other side of the story. That being bald and poor and overweight - not that that sounds very sexy - is what we all have to put up with. It's a clearer view of our lives, I think. This film celebrates the struggle to maintain some sort of dignity."

Lantana is filming for eight weeks on location around Sydney.

Its ensemble cast also includes Vince Colosimo, Russell Dykstra, Daniella Farinacci, Peter Phelps, Leah Purcell and Glenn Robbins.

Lawrence says the name Lantana suggests the tangles of a relationship as well as the film's complex structure. "Also, you have that beautiful little flower. Once you go past that, it's all thorns."

(c) The Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday, November 15, 2000

Margaret Pomeranz of the SBS Movie Show interviews Ray Lawrence

MP: What film did you think you were making? You must have met with Andrew (Bovell, scriptwriter) and talked about it...

RL:
We were making that film but, as I said, it gets to a point, and I don't know where it is, where it just has its own life. I think that that applies to any art form, whether it be music, a book, painting - I certainly know painting does it because I paint, and they just get to a point where they're their own entity, and you don't really have any more own control over it. It's sort of toward the end I guess.

MP:
Can I go back the other way, absolutely to the beginning when you and Andrew must have sat down and talked about this film, and what it was about, and what you were going to bring out of what it's about...

RL:
It wasn't so much what it was about, I think that was a given. We both, and he certainly knew what it was about, and I don't think it's that complicated. But the moment for me when I saw the play was when John says he didn't pick up the phone. And I thought that was such an original dilemma. You need conflicts for anything, but this was such an original notion, that this guy just couldn't be bothered for all that she (his wife) was needy, and he was tired and their daughter had been murdered, for all those things...

When we shot it, Geoffrey (Rush) and I were talking and I was like, what's he going to do? I don't want him sitting on a computer or anything. And he was like 'Maybe we could have him making a tuna sandwich.' We were trying to make it as banal as possible. And all of a sudden, it has these amazing ramifications. I remember in the play when the guy says the same thing, and I just thought it was so shocking. And I clung to that, and I guess Jan (Chapman, producer) had something else, and everybody had this little hook that they were clinging onto, but that's all it was for me.

And I guess in the film it isn't that shocking now I look at it, I don't see it as such a big deal because there's all this other stuff swirling around that's sort of grown. But it's an interesting thing. It's sort of like driving at night. You know where you want to go, but you can only see as far as the headlights. Where you end up is another thing.

MP:
You say what it's about is a given. Yes, moment by moment, yes but if you're going to say...

RL:
Well that's what I mean. It's about betrayal. It's about, as I said, when people start to disappear in their own eyes and they feel that they're not desirable. It's about those sorts of human things on one level, on an intelligence level, it's about those things.

Then the other part of it is about the mystery of Valerie disappearing, and then the mystery of how difficult relationships are. And then you put it all together and it gets to the point where the life of the film happens. It would be the same in the theatre, or if it was a novel, it would be the reader's experience. The thing's incomplete unless its got an audience. I've been seeing it now with somewhere between 2000 and 1300 groups of people in these festivals, and they give it an energy.

That's when you know this thing works, with all those things we put together, that we worried about, and ultimately, that we trusted. And that's the gratifying thing when the audience comes and they're like yes, it does work, and ultimately they're the only ones that can do that, and then it has a life of it's own, you can't touch it anymore, you can't worry about it, it's pointless...

MP:
Looking at it again, I realise quite a few things. You've got stunning performances, but you grounded those performances in such a reality, in a real physical environment with no sets; it's all real. Why did you do that?

RL:
Well, I like that (laughs). I hate, even when I do commercials, the aspirational notions, the veneer that's put on things. You have meetings about what sort of shirt this person's going to have, and it really doesn't matter. But all those things that society does to us, and we're all fashion victims in some way, so the idea of making a film and wanting real performances and some kind of authenticity that people could relate to is just taking it all away.

I mean we didn't use any lighting, there was no make up and those things aren't such a big deal, but they're just layers and when you start to taking them away, the actors start to feel normal. They don't feel like movie stars... all those things start to give it a normality that I wasn't sure whether it would translate, but it did in all sorts of really strange abstract ways. And I would do it again.

My hero, if you like, is Ken Loach. He's a lot more political than I am, but some of the things he gets are so close to the bone, and they're very banal things, but people respond to them and I really like that...

MP:
One thing I noticed the other day was the very specific framing that you've given your characters...

RL:
Do you mean the physical? Well, when I did Bliss, it was a very visual film with lots of tricks in it, while with this one... again it was part of trying to be authentic... I didn't want to be aware of anybody's work, specifically my own, I just wanted to be like wallpaper...

The choice of having the anamorphic or widescreen ratio was the only thing that was filmic about it, and then I wanted people to sit in that in a sort of... like when you first see Sonia at the psychiatrist's office, it's just got a white wall behind her, she could be sitting in a site, but just because of the way the light falls on her, and there's this sort of loneliness that all the characters have within that frame; and that was my only sort of visual thing. We get the feeling of people being lost. And it's not a specific thing, it's an abstract thing, that was why I eventually went with that, because otherwise it would have been just widescreen, like television.

MP:
Thematically, you use that with all the characters. You place them on the edge of the screen and there's a lot of expanse between them.

RL:
Yeah, and there's not a lot of close-ups. The only real close-ups are when John and Valerie are making love and she tells him, "Look at me." When you see them on a big screen, they're shocking, they're so big. So I tried to avoid close up's. And so there's just all these people up on a big screen just kind of floating, didn't know where they were. That's the intellectual notion, whether it works or not. But that was the only visual thing that I wanted to do.

Anthony (La Paglia) said, "There aren't many other films where the director says 'Let's sit there and tell the truth'", and that's basically what I did. There was so much pressure put on the actors, which they loved, but it was all down to them. I didn't get good performances out of them, they were there anyway. They wanted to give them and I allowed them. I didn't get in their way...

MP:
What you did for them was choose them in the first place.

RL: Yeah, but they sort of chose themselves in a way. And more and more I think that there's this sort of organic process that's bound up in trusting your instincts, which is such a non-organic thing... There wasn't a lot of brow beating. I think the hardest thing was Andrew's bit - having to write it. We had it all there. As Anthony says, we're just interpreter's. I'm not the author of this film, Andrew is. I think that would have to have been the most difficult thing with this film, having to write it. It was a joy to make.

MP:
Was there a pressure to have Geoffrey Rush and Barbara Hershey because...

RL:
That was always there and it'll never go away. I would love to just cast people. There are any number of really good actors in this country who nobody knows, or the public don't know, but there's this pressure that you have to have people with 'a profile', they call it. There are actually lists who will green light it. An actor could see this film, one with a high profile might see this film and say 'Ray, I want to work with you' and that's all it takes. They're so powerful, they can just green light it. And you'd think for this picture, having Geoffrey Rush was enough. Then we had Anthony, and that still wasn't enough. Then we needed a third one, and this was only a small picture, $3 million US. So, you look at the film now, and it's just really tough on anybody to make a film.

MP:
I don't understand that. You spend so little money on a film you'd think there'd be no risk getting your money for it.

RL:
I don't understand it either... You know, I didn't have a profile either... I hadn't made a picture for so long, only old people know Bliss (Laughs)...

MP:
... The mood on the shoot of Lantana. It had such an extraordinary feel to it.

RL:
Yeah it did. I miss it. If I had a script now it would take two to three years to get it going with funding, if there were no problems.... I'm not going to wait another 16 years. I'll either do it, or I won't bother....

It's a privilege to make a film. We're really lucky to be able to do this, to have the opportunity to do it anyway...

Lantana

Reviewed By Margaret Pomeranz, SBS Movie Show (c) 2001

Lantana is quite a few things in film. It's a mystery, a thriller, but more than anything else it's about the human dimension...what we want in life, trust in relationships is so difficult to attain and yet so easy. Leon, Anthony LaPaglia, is a police detective who's cheating on his wife, Sonja, Kerry Armstrong, with Jane, Rachel Blake. Jane who's separated from her husband, Glenn Robbins, lives next door to Paula, Daniela Farinacci, and Nik, Vince Colosimo, a happily married couple who will become entwined in the events of the film. Sonja who senses her husband's alienation is seeing a psychiatrist Valerie, Barbara Hershey who's married to an academic, Geoffrey Rush. Their relationship is marred by grief about the death of their daughter. But the film opens with the dead body of a woman in the midst of a lantana scrub and it's Leon's investigation of this event that connects everyone, including another of Valerie's patients, played by Peter Phelps...Lantana is just about the best thing I've seen in cinema in recent memory. It's been directed by Ray Lawrence who sadly hasn't made a film since Bliss in 1985. This adaptation by Andrew Bovell of his stage play Speaking in Tongues is a film about connection and the lack of it and how much we desire it. It's a terrific screenplay. Lawrence, working with natural light, grounds his characters in very real locations, there's not a lot that's phony about this film and that includes every single performance. I want cinema to challenge me, to move me, and to make me think about what's important. Lantana does all that splendidly. It's a landmark Australian film, it's a landmark film regardless of country of origin.

David Stratton *****

Margaret Pomeranz *****

And the winner is...

LANTANA
Rating: M.
Starring: Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Kerry Armstrong, Barbara Hershey, Vince Colosimo, Peter Phelps.
Critic's warning: Language, sex scenes, violence.
Critic's rating: 9 out of 10.

Reviewed by Rob Lowing

If you want to know right now who deserves this year's Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actor, it's Anthony LaPaglia, no contest.

After excellent performances in Looking For Alibrandi and The Bank, LaPaglia has quietly emerged as Australia's most consistently talented and versatile performer.

In his latest film, Lantana, he turns in work of such subtly structured energy that at times he conveys a world of emotions in just one look.

As for Lantana itself, this brooding, unnervingly intimate, marital drama is one of the best local films in recent years. It's flawlessly acted and photographed and beautifully written, with none of the sloppy, "improvised" feel of so many local duds.

Forget over-expensive twaddle such as Moulin Rouge or the sludgily sentimental The Dish. It's Lantana's cast and crew who deserve to sweep the AFI Awards next month.

We're not giving away the plot of this psychological detective story. It's enough to say that the story revolves around an increasingly emotionally stressed Sydney policeman (LaPaglia) and his increasingly worried wife (Kerry Armstrong).

She's right to be worried: LaPaglia has just had a one-night stand with bored and restless Rachael Blake, herself just separated from her stunned husband (Glenn Robbins).

Blake gazes jealously at her next door neighbours, young married couple Colosimo and Daniela Farinacci, who are still in the early, passionate stage of their relationship.

LaPaglia, meanwhile, finds his life intersecting with that of stuffy and possibly malevolent university academic Geoffrey Rush. He and his psychiatrist wife (Hershey) have their own marital problems stemming from a family tragedy which occurred 18 months before.

These couples all criss-cross in a marvellously twisting tale which is a series of emotional and physical mysteries, each filled with surprises and red herrings.

It's a world-class production all round, a terrific achievement for director Ray Lawrence, who's back on local cinema screens some 16 years after making Bliss.

It is actually impossible to fault any actor here; even those who initially seem arch and distant are later revealed to be so for a reason. This film is so well cast that even the smaller support performances are perfect: Peter Phelps, the studly star of television's Stingers, delivers an entire storyline on his own as a client of Hershey's. Ditto the radiant Leah Purcell, who injects crucial warmth as LaPaglia's cop partner.

Other highlights include the script by Andrew Bovell. He's working from his play Speaking In Tongues but has mercifully excluded any of that dreaded "staginess" which often afflicts adaptations.

Thumbs up, too, to the exquisite cinematography from Mandy Walker and equally subtle music score from Paul Kelly.

Overall, it seems the reaction of a mean-spirited turnip to not give Lantana the full gong, a perfect score. The only possible quibble is that the film feels as though it's grinding to a halt at times; it feels slightly overlong although, to be fair, it's hard to see where to cut.

Also, a film should really be seen twice - and make you want to see it twice - to earn a 10 out of 10; let's not indiscriminately chuck your money around.

Somehow, seeing Lantana once felt like it was enough. That's not necessarily because the film isn't cinematic enough to sit through again. It may be that it is so vivid that you actually need months before you can cope with a second viewing.

(c) The Sun-Herald, 2001

43rd Australian Film Institute Awards, November 2001

Full list of film award winners

Best film: Lantana

Best direction: Ray Lawrence, Lantana

Best actress: Kerry Armstrog, Lantana

Best actor: Anthoy LaPaglia, Lantana

Best supporting actress: Rachael Blake, Lantana

Best supporting actor: Vince Colosimo, Lantana

Best costume design: Catherine Martin and Angus Strathie, Moulin Rouge

Best sound: Guntis Sics, Roger Savage and Andy Nelson, Moulin Rouge

Best editing: Jill Bilcock, Moulin Rouge

Best original music score: Cezary Skubiszewski, La Spagnola

Best production design: Catherine Martin, Moulin Rouge

Best original screenplay: Robert Connolly, The Bank

Best adapted screenplay: Andrew Bovell, Lantana

Best cinematography: Don McAlpine, Moulin Rouge

Best foreign film: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Blissful comeback as Lantana sweeps movie awards

By Garry Maddox, Film Writer
(c) Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday, November 17, 2001

Director Ray Lawrence proved that history can repeat when Lantana dominated the Australian Film Institute awards last night.

The tense drama about interweaving relationships, set in suburban Sydney, won best film ahead of Moulin Rouge, The Dish and The Bank. The quietly spoken Lawrence also won best director. Way back in 1985, his first film, Bliss, won the same two awards.

The night capped a remarkable comeback for Lawrence after a bleak struggle to finance a second film. He has said that making commercials stopped him getting bitter while trying to make adaptations of Tim Winton's The Riders and Robyn Davidson's Tracks among other films.

"I guess all the things I wanted to do, not a lot of other people did," he said

But since gathering an ensemble cast for Lantana, the recognition has flowed. The film opened the Sydney Film Festival, has become a hit at the Australian box office and will be released in North America next month.

Lantana won five other awards including all four acting prizes. Kerry Armstrong won best actress over Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge), Spain's Lola Marceli (La Spagnola) and newcomer Alice Ansara (La Spagnola). In a rare double, she also won best actress in a television drama for playing Heather Jelly in SeaChange.

Best actor went to Lantana's Anthony LaPaglia ahead of David Wenham (The Bank), Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge) and Ben Mendelsohn (Mullet).

In the supporting actor and actress awards, Vince Colosimo and Rachael Blake won for their roles in Lantana.

In the strongest field at the awards for years, Lantana's writer, Andrew Bovell, won best adapted screenplay while Robert Connolly won best original screenplay for The Bank.

The country's most successful film at the box office this year, the Baz Luhrmann-directed Moulin Rouge, was tipped out of the main two categories but won five awards, including best production design for Catherine Martin, best costume design for Catherine Martin and Angus Strathie and best cinematography for Don McAlpine.

While the low-budget La Spagnola surprised with 11 nominations - more than any film except Lantana - only Cezary Skubiszewski won for best original score.

In a special prize, Oscar winner Russell Crowe won the first global achievement award while the writer of Blue Murder, Ian David, was honoured with the Byron Kennedy prize.

The awards, held in Melbourne, were a triumph for the documentary partnership of Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson. Their film, Facing the Music, which tracks the turmoil inside Sydney University's music department, won best documentary.

In the television categories, the prizes were widely spread with the Ten Network drama The Secret Life of Us winning two awards - Samuel Johnson as best actor in a TV drama series and Catherine McClements as best actress in a guest role. As well as Armstrong in the best actress category, SeaChange won best episode in a TV drama series.