Lantana

Like an Australian version of an Altman film, director Ray Lawrence’s mesmerizing drama examines the overlapping lives of a cross section of middle-aged characters. On the surface, Lantana works as an exquisitely twisty mystery, a la ”Gosford Park,” in which a philandering police detective (an Oscar caliber performance from LaPaglia, for once not masking his Aussie accent) investigates the disappearance of his wife’s shrink (Hershey). On a deeper level, the movie offers a gratifyingly sophisticated meditation on the vagaries of modern marriage.