"A  woman driving, her car breaks down, she makes a series of phone calls and basically ends up talking to an answering machine", is how playwright Andrew Bovell describes his first idea from which he developed the stage play 'Speaking in Tongues'. "And I was looking for a contemporary story that would lead me into the whole terrain of marriage and relationships."

Bovell writes for the stage and the screen and co-wrote the screenplays for 'Head On' and 'Strictly Ballroom'.

Director Ray Lawrence went along to lend support on the opening night of the 1996 season of Bovell's play at the Stables Theatre in Sydney.

It was fifteen years after Lawrence received acclaim for his film Bliss, which was screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. While he enjoyed a successful career as one of Australia's leading commercials directors, he had not made a film since Bliss, looking for the right film project.

When he saw 'Speaking in Tongues' he called Bovell after the performance and told him that "there's a movie in there. The play was really dense and original. And it was a mystery."

For Bovell the film was not immediately apparent in the stage play as it was very theatrical and had a very different structure. "But Ray was looking beyond the theatre of it to the people and stories, and it was there that he recognised the idea for Lantana," says Bovell. "I think I was quietly hoping that one day this material might become a film so it was really exciting to hear him say that."

Having worked with Bovell on two previous projects, producer Jan Chapman was also in the audience that night. When Lawrence mentioned to her that he could see a film within the play she was not immediately convinced. "I actually loved the play but I didn't know that it would be a great film. And so I said "Well, why don't you see if you can come up with the treatment."

Bovell and Lawrence went ahead and developed a ten page treatment which Chapman immediately responded to: "Suddenly I could see it could have a real filmic quality."

Bovell, Lawrence and Chapman had already formed a close relationship after developing another film idea. Wanting to continue the invigorating collaboration the three had enjoyed they embarked on the three year journey it took to complete the final screenplay for Lantana.

Adapting the stage play to a screenplay presented challenges and required certain departures and changes to the structure of the play.  "It seemed to me that with this adaptation I had to re-invent the story, I had to retell it. The core elements were there but we had to find a new angle on it. And that happened with characters being dropped, new characters being created, and genders being changed. We had to get beyond the theatrical construction to the very core emotions of it."

"Lantana is a mystery, a thriller, but it is also much more than that," says Lawrence. "As we move through our lives and relationships there is, for most of us, a sense of slowly becoming invisible. I think sexual identity, or the loss of it, plays a big part. It happens at different times for different reasons, but it's safe to say that it starts as we approach middle age. It's something that for the most part happens to all of us and the audience will recognise the day to day struggle we have with ourselves."

"What attracted me to it was the essence of relationships," says Chapman, "and the difficulty that all relationships have because there are two individual people who never really understand each other. You try really hard and you have moments where you have epiphanies and you do really see the other person, but mostly you're little island s. I was really interested to explore the universal sense of that through the different relationships in the film."

Once Bovell, Chapman and Lawrence had realised their collaboration interest in the essential themes within the play, the writing of the screenplay began.

"The three way  relationship between producer, writer and director was very important in the process," says Bovell. "They were right with me through the writing period. I would write a draft, bring it to them, and the three of us would sit down and talk it through, and I'd do away and write another draft. During that process a sense of trust builds up."

During the process Bovell's initial idea of a woman whose car broke down grew into a series of interweaving and tangled stories all connected to the woman's disappearance which ripples through several characters lives.

"I started to imagine who picked this woman up, what was his story, and what was the story of his wife who was waiting for him to come home that night," says Bovell. "And what was the story of the woman who lived next door and saw him come home. And I realised that this one little story of this woman who disappears kind of reverberated through a whole lot of people's lives. The more Ray talked about the film, the more I began to incorporate that into the writing process.  So actually by the time the screenplay was ready it was a reflection of how he had responded to it, and how he started to see the film."

With a final draft of the script eventually ready the task of funding the film began which represented another challenging journey in bringing the film to the screen.

"People with money don't seem to like the same things I do," says Lawrence. "It was really difficult for Jan to raise money for Lantana, probably the most difficult thing she's ever done. If I'd had a profile as a feature film director it would have been a lot easier, but I didn't, so it was really difficult for her and I think most producers would have just given up."

Chapman began filmmaking as a director of short films within the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op and worked as a director and producer of drama for the Australian Broadcasting co-operation, before making her debut as producer for Gillian Armstrong's The Last Day of Chez Nous.

"No film is easy to finance and it's true that for a producer the business of financing is the hardest part of all," says Chapman. "You have to have a steely determination that you will see that film on the screen. The script had a great response. The investors would say they loved it, but to get them to the point of actually writing a cheque and giving us money was very difficult."

With funding in place the creative team was able to focus on casting the film as they moved closer to production. It was a requirement from the investors that, of the large ensemble cast, at least three of the actors would be of international profile.

"Ray and I really wanted to cast the film as truthfully as we could with Australian actors and of course there is a limited number of actors with that kind of profile in Australia," says Chapman. "That's such a strange part of the process because you just want to find the actors who you think are right, and so if you have to have people with names you want them to be the right names for the characters."

"From the first ten pages I thought, I love this, I just hope it's the part of Leon," says Anthony LaPaglia, who plays the central character of Leon, a forty-year-old married man with two teenage boys, who struggles to stay in control of his life.  "It was one of the best characters I'd read in a long time. I understood him, exactly what he was thinking and feeling, exactly why he's in the place he's in. I've been there myself. I love the restraint, he's not loud, he has episodes of violence, but he holds everything in."

"Lantana is about that moment in life when you wake up and say 'How the hell did this become my life?', when your life isn't  what you thought it would be. The dreams that you had never eventuated and suddenly you're living a life of quiet desperation, a life of suburbia, a life of just getting by. And all those dreams you had as a young person seem to have gone and suddenly you own a life you don't want. You think there's something more. And I think that's a devastating moment for a lot of people."

After some initial discussions about the script, Geoffrey Rush felt instinctively drawn to the role of John. "There was something very special about this script in that Andrew had managed to juggle about ten or twelve characters who come from quite a wide variety of different Australian experiences," says Rush. "It observes and dissects about five different marriages or relationships. But at the same time it's a thriller, it's a mystery.

"The film is a very broad and complex and fascinating portrait of Australian life and it has a particular emotional domestic quality in the details of people's lives being so closely and crucially observed. There's a breadth and a depth of connection that all these characters have so that you're going to recognises yourself in the film somewhere. And it's going to be things that you won't feel terribly comfortable wanting to recognise. Andrew's not afraid of revealing that men have very complex interior emotional lives."

Along with the detail and resonance in the writing and the rich characterisations Rush was also drawn in by the mystery element on which the film's plot is based. "The events of the story line take over in a cataclysmic way and it stylistically becomes a thriller. The audience isn't being asked to speculate as to what the future paths of these characters are because you're basically seeing them deal with very immediate circumstances. Just when you're cruising with one story line and getting drawn into the world of john and Valerie, suddenly you're also following another marriage."

Barbara Hershey was cast in the role of John's wife Valerie. "The thing that makes me respond to scripts is either the story itself and just wanting to be a part of the story because I love it so much, or it's an okay story but it's just such an amazing character that I want to play it. And then there are those few where it's both, and this was the case. And it wasn't just my role I loved. I loved all the roles. I knew all the actors would be stimulated and turned on by it, so I wanted to be part of that tapestry."

"Valerie's a psychiatrist and right away that puts up a lot of red flags for me because I often think of that saying 'Doctor heal thyself' where even though in my own life I can understand something intellectually I still can't help myself from going through it. I think the fact that Valerie can help other people is one of the few ways she can stay afloat for herself, and as soon as she's not needed in that way anymore she's floundering, because her own life is so bereft. John and Valerie are in their own individual hells. And it's ripped them apart as a couple."

When a final cut of the film was completed in March 2001, a few small screenings took place where it was evident the film responded with an audience. It conveyed an intimate and confronting portrait of contemporary life in the context of an urban thriller.

"For me Lantana is about a search and a yearning for meaning," says Bovell. "On one level it's a mystery, and it's about how that mystery reverberates through a whole lot of people lives. It's about human vulnerability and about people reaching a particular stage in their lives where they need to question and re-examine how they're living their life, particularly in the nature of love and relationships.

"I was searching for a title that provided both a literal and metaphoric resonance to the story. It really came out of the opening image; a woman caught within the twisted and entangled vine, a woman who wore a gold ring on her finger, a married woman - the vine itself with its twisted branches covered in tiny thorns that could cut you to shred as well as lush green leaves, colourful flowers and moments of exquisite beauty."