Of course, hell means different things to different people. Through casual observation, I've been able to glean that for many married men of a certain age, hell is having a wife who doesn't exactly insist, but would very much like, for him to join her in taking salsa-dancing lessons. Such is Anthony LaPaglia's torment in Lantana, a moody, often incisive mystery-character study written by Andrew Bovell and directed by Ray Lawrence, in which three variously dissatisfied couples and one pair who can barely keep their hands off each other (in a nice way) intersect in a scenario that sparks an epiphany—for at least one of them. As Leon, a detective who's a burnt-out case both physically and emotionally, LaPaglia gives a superb, self-effacing performance; Geoffrey Rush is haunting as a somewhat snootier type dealing (or not dealing) with a different manifestation of empathetic disconnection. Kerry Armstrong and Barbara Hershey, as their respective spouses, give equally complex performances. The movie's thriller hook is really just that: a hook, a pretext on which to hang some remarkably conceived and executed characterizations—characterizations that raise questions that may haunt you long after you've forgotten the movie's knotty plot.