Marital stress, modern relationships and the difficulty in making a successful go at either is the over-riding lattice-work that surrounds this small, delicate and expertly crafted Australian film. It's impossible, particularly in this film not to point out the overlapping Altman-like structure of the plot - but it's so commonplace anymore that it hardly bears mentioning. In any case, this ensemble piece is built around the delicacies of dissolving marriages, and brief infidelities all of which loom upon this story like a fog at sea until the ghost ship of rocky relationships smashes upon a reef of intrigue and mystery.

Two troubled marriages, connected through happenstance with several other small degrees of separation, find Anthony LaPaglia, a police inspector who takes out his many frustrations on suspects and in bed with Jane (Rachael Blake), pretty much a one-night-stand that won't stop standing. She is an almost-divorced woman he met at a salsa dance class his wife Sonja (Kerry Armstrong) drags him to every week. His marriage to Sonja his ever distant and unhappy wife is a boat that is drifting farther and farther from shore, which is a problem she lays upon the shoulders of her shrink Valerie Sommers Barbara Hershey.

Hershey is a respected professional married to another respected professional in the legal field Geoffrey Rush, whose marriage has not well-survived the murder of their young daughter two years before. Their marriage has grown so numb since the loss of their child that they speak to each other -- even about sex -- like two people that know each other only as casual acquaintances. Valerie has chosen to grieve publicly, publishing a book about the killing, while Rush deals with his loss by secretly visiting the site of he murder. Neither will recover, this we know straight away.

The circumstances that lead up to the great mystery are handled with a fairly deft touch, if you exclude one inexplicable outburst from Hershey, and result in perhaps the kindest, most decent character in the film, a neighbor of Jane's being implicated in the disappearance of Hershey's character. I'm sure there will be a naysayer or two about how this movie comes to a climax and how it is resolved, but I found it strangely satisfying. You certainly don't see it coming - particularly after the David Lynch-esque opener - which leaves your mind open to any sort of morbid possibility. Not a bad film this, not so much for it's story, as it is for it's extremely insightful glance into the nature of marriage and relationships. That's what this movie boils down to and on that account it gets straight A's. (Not so sure what Lantana is? Perhaps the name of the town they all reside in - or a salsa dance, they struggled to learn). Pop in and straighten the old Boneman out if you know.