B

Ray Lawrence brings a laconic, methodical tone to this film based on a short story by Raymond Carver, about a quartet of men who find a murdered girl’s body while on a fishing trip and are later castigated for not reporting the fact until after finishing their vacation. (The tale earlier served as one of the strands in Robert Altman’s 1993 “Short Cuts,” and it certainly has themes in common with Tim Hunter’s 1986 “River’s Edge.”) The story was originally set in the Pacific Northwest, but here it’s moved to the titular Australian town; and a major new theme is added by the transformation of the dead girl into an Aborigine, whose family and friends impute racial motive to the men’s decision to put their recreation ahead of immediately contacting the authorities.

The geographical change isn’t fatal, but it does inflate the material in an unfortunate way, leading it into the same sort of mystical treatment of an abused minority that Hollywood pictures have so often adopted toward Native Americans (or, at one point in cinematic history, African-Americans). It’s not, of course, that the Aborigines, like Native Americans and blacks, haven’t been oppressed. It’s that the portrayal of their culture is so ostentatiously reverential that it seems more obligatory than authentic, the result more of (understandable) guilt rather than dramatic honesty.

Aside from that, however, there’s much that’s impressive in “Jindabyne.” Like Lawrence’s previous picture, “Lantana,” and more successfully, it’s the rare film that poses moral choices for the audience without reducing them to oversimplification. It also creates a mood of quiet, suppressed tension, not merely in the story of Stewart (Gabriel Byrne), the garage owner who actually finds the dead girl, and his wife Claire (Laura Linney), who becomes the script’s ethical compass, but also in the complementary plot thread involving their little son Tom (Sean Rees-Wemyss) and his troubled school chum Caylin-Calandria (Eva Lazzaro), who play games involving death that—like those in “Jeux interdits”—reflect on the adults’ attitudes. And Lawrence’s treatment, which stages the action in discrete, carefully-staged scenes that ordinarily end in complete fade-outs (courtesy, one presumes, of editor Karl Sodersten), avoids the slightest hit of genre crudity—though, it must be admitted, it lends a certain air of ponderous self-importance to the proceedings, too.

The cast is excellent, with Byrne giving another of his sturdy, intense performances and Linney doing searching work, even if her character’s inner life is only elliptically revealed. There’s also strong support across the board, especially from Deborra-lee Furness as Caylin-Calandria’s adoptive mother, who’d facing her own demons. And from the technical perspective, the film is coolly atmospheric, with David Williamson’s cinematography and the music by Paul Kelly and Dan Luncombe adding to the effect.

And yet that added Aboriginal plot thread feels intrusive, especially since Lawrence and scripter Beatrix Christian make it so integral a part of their work. One might also find the figure of Gregory (Chris Haywood), the elderly electrician with whom “Jindabyne” begins and ends, too opaque and unexplained a character for comfort—especially in terms of the very last shot, which one’s apparently meant to read a good deal into. But ultimately the film’s sensitive treatment of the domestic issues at the center of the story goes far to make up for the more problematic passages.