Jindabyne (2007)
A young woman driving along a lonely road in the middle of the day is stopped and killed by an older man who’s purpose and identity remain a mystery. A couple (Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney) try their damndest to keep past hurt and a meddling mother from eating their relationship alive. A young boy experiments in death with a friend who’s family knows their own heartbreak. The wounds of these various characters fester (in the titular Australian town) until a shocking act of self-absorption brings everything to the breaking point.
Which is another way of saying that Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne is another of those domestic hell movies that earn respectable reviews because nothing’s really wrong with them except for the fact that you don’t care. Everything in Jindabyne feels too mapped out, too finely calculated to elicit maximum human nature is icky underneath the plastic surface dread. Even Linney and Byrne, who are both fine, feel too familiar. How often is Linney asked to play this same frustrated, intelligent woman who finds herself at a certain, blah, blah, blah. Linney is a wonderful, beautiful, intuitive actress, but she needs to find something soon that resists the urge to cast her as all of Womankind’s frustrations with that species that shall be known as Man. Byrne fares mildly better for the simple reason that you don’t see him as often.
Lawrence’s film is based on the Raymond Carver story “So Much Water So Close to Home”, and the difference between the two is a lesson in over thinking something that already works just fine. Want Carver? Watch Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. Want a simmering, unspoken domestic tragedy? Watch Todd Field’s blunter, but considerably more effective In the Bedroom. Want to a great 2007 Laura Linney performance? See The Savages. Jindabyne is not a bad movie, it’s a perfectly ok movie you’ll respect while watching and forget a week later.
★★½
November 17th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Ouch.
I got sucked in by this one. I think I got interested in Byrne and Linney and their relationship and everything kind of fell into place.
Ah well, they can’t all be winners, right?
November 18th, 2007 at 10:44 am
True, they can’t, and this certainly wasn’t a loser, but I felt it was part of a certain kind of gloom chic (that especially exists in the realms of the art house) that tends to irritate me. I’m a bit of a pessimist myself, and I like my movies with a strong dose of cynicism, but I also like movies that feel a little more essential and original.