Jindabyne - Limited Theatrical Release April 27

Somehow all of us at Twitch missed out on Australia's Jindabyne when it played at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. The film uses the same source material that Robert Altman built the fishing segment in 1993's Short Cuts; a short story from Raymond Carver. Mystic elements in the film sound a bit like Peter Weir's stunning Picnic a Hanging Rock. If the film comes out as a hybrid of those two brilliant films, I'll be a happy camper. The fact that Jindabyne features the always solid Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne gives me a fair bit of confidence.

"On an annual fishing trip, in isolated high country, Stewart, Carl, Rocco and Billy (‘the Kid’) find a girl’s body in the river. It’s too late in the day for them to hike back to the road and report their tragic find. The next morning, instead of making the long trek back, they spend the day fishing. Their decision to stay on at the river is a little mysterious—almost as if the place itself is exerting some kind of magic over them.
When the men finally return home to Jindabyne, and report finding the body, all hell breaks loose. Their wives can’t understand how they could have gone fishing with the dead girl right there in the water—she needed their help. The men are confused—the girl was already dead, there was nothing they could do for her."

The film is getting a North American theatrical release on April 27th. The Australia (R4, PAL) DVD was released in November 2006.

Trailer (Downloadable Quicktime)