Review of Jindabyne (2006) by Walter M — 16 Mar 2008

[font=Century Gothic]"Jindabyne," based on the same Raymond Carver story that formed part of Robert Altman's "Short Cuts," is a frustrating attempt to stretch it to a full-length movie, setting it in a resort town in Australia. In this case the body belongs to Susan Cooper(Tatea Reilly), a young Aboriginal woman who disappeared on her way to a music festival. Her body is discovered by Stewart Kane(Gabriel Byrne), a white mechanic on a fishing trip with three buddies, whose American wife, Claire(Laura Linney, excellent again), has been suffering from nausea, hoping that she is pregnant, because the alternative is too horrifying to contemplate.[/font].

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[font=Century Gothic]The major problem with "Jindabyne" is not with the leisurely pacing(which does allow time to capture the beautiful Australian countryside wonderfully). It is in how the movie is constructed, giving too much time to establish how much of an outsider Claire is.(Personally, I don't blame her for being alarmed that her son brought a knife to school. And I find all children to be a little creepy but that little girl takes the cake.) More time should have been spent at the fishing party, just enough to draw out the horror while revealing less about Susan's killer which should have been left more of a mystery. And the ending is particularly weak.[/font].

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[font=Century Gothic]What would have been interesting is if one half of the movie had been spent with the Kanes, and the other half with the Coopers, which would have provided more of a dialogue on racism instead of the usual language of denunciation that we are already so used to hearing. What the movie is concerned with is how the everyday lies we tell separate us from not only our loved ones but also men from women and people of different skin color into different camps. [/font].