Jindabyne

REVIEW
Claire and Stewart Kane (Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne, both turning in virtuosic performances) appear to be the average couple, seemingly happily married with children and the envy of their friends and family in the small Australian mountain town of Jindabyne. But their stability proves fragile after Stewart and his fishing buddies opt not to let a dead girl’s body they find in a remote mountain stream that they escape to each year to cut short their only chance to enjoy each other’s company away from the day-to-day grind of their working-class lives. Based on a Raymond Carver short story — “So Much Water So Close to Home,” which also figured in Altman’s Short Cuts — Jindabyne makes a crucial modification to the story in transposing the setting to Australia: the young girl whose body is found is aboriginal, creating a racial subtext that allows for the examination of the complicated coexistence of disparate cultures in that country. The result is a rich and nuanced film that shifts modes assuredly between suspense-filled murder mystery and compelling family drama. The magnificently-photographed landscapes of this remote corner of Australia, ranging from lush mountain forest to vast, arid desert, provide a placid counterpoint to the emotional turmoil of the tightly written screenplay in a film that pulls off a sensibility common in American independents better than a majority of the real thing.