Ray Lawrence employs specific tactics in this film that allow it to go from dramatic to mysterious to a thriller if not a horror film in feeling at times. He opens the picture by showing us a body beneath the lantana flowers. He’s telling us that there are things beneath the surface that will be revealed in this story. We watch as Leon begins and ends his affair with Jane, Valerie sees patients for therapy sessions, Jane meets with Paula and Nik her neighbors to tell them of her affair as well as the dance classes where Leon and Sonja are joined by Jane. All of this is important to note because Lawrence films them in a very natural light. He’s saying that these very big issues are very real. They happen in real life. Thus he creates a sense of realism drawing us into the story visually while also knowing that someone has died.
As the film progresses, Lawrence begins to shoot more at night. The color palate of the film changes and we begin to see more darkness and blues to create a mood associated with a thriller. We see this when Jane is looking out of her window at Nik as he throws a shoe into the bush after we watch Valerie drive through the pitch blackness of the night and become stranded. Lawrence even makes the film feel like a horror when Valerie is making her calls to John at the payphone in the middle of the night. A lone phone booth in the middle of nowhere with a closed and locked shop behind her as the light from the booth shines brightly down on her, illuminating her isolation. And he even pushes in close on her inside the booth as she cries leaving her last message to John. Then two headlights cut through the darkness and we connect the initial image of the dead body to this moment. We are afraid for Valerie as he begin to know that she is the victim.
Once the truth of what happens to Valerie unfolds, Lawrence switches back to the realistic palate as in the beginning of the film. The switch in tones that he uses are very specific and if done poorly could’ve have taken the film off track, but he threaded the needle with his choices and provided a film full of imagery you could feel. It allows the audience to come into the story emotionally, and thus makes them part of the film as they begin to participate in what is happening as if they were there.
