Film Reviews

Jindabyne

• Rating:
• Director: Ray Lawrence
• Starring: Chris Haywood
• Details: Australia / 123 mins (15A).

"We found a body. We caught the most amazing fish, though." Based on Raymond Carver's short story So Much Water So Close To Home, which got an airing in Robert Altman's Short Cuts, Lantana director Ray Lawrence switches the locale to the Australian outback and in the process changes the ethos of the story. Four fishermen from the small town of Jindabyne, New South Wales, among them Irishman Stewart Kane (Byrne), set off for their annual fishing trip in the mountains. Before he casts his first line, Stewart finds the body of an Aboriginal woman, but instead of calling the police or turning for home, the men continue fishing for a further two days, tying the woman to a tree so she won't float downstream. This callous attitude rips the town apart and puts Stewart's marriage to Claire (Linney) in jeopardy. A downbeat, low key film, Jindabyne is a slow burner, meticulously building up back story, character and interrelationships before launching into the real issue at hand: the cold nature of man, the inability to act as a human being, that people no longer care about what happens to other people. "I've no feelings one way or the other. She's dead," Stewart says. However, Lawrence ill-advisedly veers off to embrace the race issue - white man's attitude to an Aboriginal woman - and gives that the holly for the second half. The acting on show is flawless and Byrne and Linney probably haven't been better.

Review by Gavin Burke