Jindabyne

Ray Lawrence had a lot to live up to. His first movie since the acclaimed Lantana, probably the best Australian movie ever, was probably on a hiding to nothing.
He gave it his best shot with Jindabyne, but he just slipped up somewhere along the way.
I can't quite put my finger on what was missing.
Before that I should say the movie is about four men and their wives/girlfriends and how the events of a weekend fishing trip changed their lives and the town of Jindabyne.
The performances are outstanding but you wouldn't expect any less from the likes of Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney, who are the leads. The only strange thing about them is he's playing an Irishman and she's clearly American, yet the film is distinctly Australian.
Any movie based on a short story is risky because there isn't much to work with and I think that is where Jindabyne suffered. It was too long, or it took too long before the mystery of the movie began.
Of course there is the divide between men and women being explored here as well. But it's not so explicit, and even though it is arguable whether it needs to be I didn't feel that was what the movie was about as such.
In Lantana you were hooked fairly early in the piece and while Jindabyne does borrow from the style of introducing you to what has happened before the characters find out it's far less effective. The scenery is exceptional and the soundtrack is haunting but the on-screen action doesn't have the same pace.
A good film, very well acted and shot but it suffered from focusing too much time on minor characters that went nowhere and too little time on the real story being told. There was plenty of racial tension, which I haven't seen in many Australian films, and it was well handled but could have been a larger part of the story.
Maybe I was expecting too much, based on fairly wholesale praise for the film, but I was a shade let down. A 7/10.