Separate Lies
by Julian Fellowes
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Emily Watson, Hermione Norris, John Warnaby, Rupert Everett, Tom WilkinsonDirector: Julian Fellowes
Brand: WATSON,EMILY
Cinematographer: Tony Pierce-Roberts
Writer: Julian Fellowes
Editor: Alex Mackie
Producer: Christian Colson
Producer: Paul Smith
Producer: Steve Clark-Hall
Writer: Nigel Balchin
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 85 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-02-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of Separate Lies
Movie Review: "What's the point in getting the police involved"
Summary: 5 Stars
We had the pleasure of meeting Emily Watson a couple of years ago while working out at our neighborhood gym. She's a lovely girl, and we talked with her for quite sometime about her life and her career, so when a new movie of hers comes out, it's a real event for us. But nothing prepared us for her phenomenal performance in Separate Lies, Julian Fellowes' devastatingly bleak examination into the moral morass of betrayal, illicit sex, hypocrisy, and crime.
What a tangled web of secrets and lies that we weave, at least one would think so after watching this beautifully acted movie. Relying on a few crucial characters, soothing locations and precise storytelling, without a shot or line of dialogue wasted, Fellowes has created a perfect chamber piece, an intense look at a flailing marriage and an accidental crime seen through the eyes of three people.
James and Anne Manning (Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson) are leading a seemingly idyllic life, as an English upper-middle-class couple. James is a highly respected and successful international solicitor, while Anne is his loving and ostensibly happy companion. They are childless for reasons that are explained later in the story.
Trouble starts when James suspects that a neighbor, Bill Bule (Rupert Everett), the indolent and lazy son of a peer, is to blame for a hit-and-run accident that claimed the life of the husband of the Mannings' cleaning lady (Linda Bassett). James takes the chap out to lunch and politely informs him of his suspicions, but is appalled when Bill feels no remorse when he casually commits to the crime.
Anne adds more fuel to the fire, when that night at home; she tells her husband that there is more to the incident. Anne was not only involved, but she is also having an affair with Bill. The ever so righteous James is of course devastated, and the rest of the movie charts his decent into emotional hell, a web of lies and deceit, as he must not only lie to protect his wife and his marriage, but also cope with her infidelity.
James is at once on the same and opposite side of Bill, his dark rival. This devilish twist gives Separate Lies not only its dramatic juice but also turns it into an intriguing study in morality. James is plagued with moral ambiguity, and as he sorts through the wreckage of his marriage, he discovers he's just as guilty of lying to himself as his errant wife - who achieves an unassuming heroism that has nothing to do with looking right for the neighbors - is of deceiving him.
As the couple in distress, Wilkinson and Watson are both pitch perfect, with Wilkinson in particular, absolutely astonishing in his ability to convey weakness and strength, hypocrisy and gallantry, cruelty and compassion. He's a man who embodies everything, unexpectedly passionate and actually human in this very particular, very entangled drama.
And what of the lovely Ms. Watson? Well, she's tremendous as Anne, the wayward and somewhat bored housewife, who sacrifices the comfy cottage and the shared silverware for a reckless affair with a feckless man who doesn't really love her. Rupert Everett is also terrific as Bill - his handsome face strangely sculpted into a disturbing mixture of beauty and excess - as the "louche hauteur" of the bored and wealthy British upper crust.
Each actor manages to capture the subtle nuances of people who have wholly different ideas about wedded bliss. Where James sees an orderly and upright life, Anne sees impossible demands and standards to which she will always, somehow, fail. Which makes her highly susceptible to Bill's bad-boy sexuality and his gruff, lazy, and ultimately self-indulgent ways.
The cinematography is evocative and gorgeous, with Tony Pierce-Roberts supplying lovely, pristine images of London, Paris, Wales and the bucolic Buckinghamshire countryside. Alison Riva's sets and Michele Clapton's costumes give the film a well upholstered though lived-in look, and Alex Mackie and Martin Walsh's editing is unusually crisp and affected. This is British filmmaking at its outstanding best, full of fascinating layers of emotional complexity and moral ambiguity.
But Separate Lies is most notable for the astounding performance of Tom Wilkinson, who has a way of portraying several emotions at once that puts you inside even the least endearing of his characters. He gives a performance that's at first totally unsympathetic and alienating, and then tremendously moving, as James undergoes the most painful and tender transformation of his life, as he must learn to give up the thing that he loves the most - his wife. Mike Leonard October 05.
Summary of Separate Lies
Secrets and lies spiral out of control in this heart-pounding suspense thriller. Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson star as James and Anna, a seemingly happy couple whose marriage begins to unravel when he learns sheÂ's been having an affair with their seductive neighbor Bill (Rupert Everett). When a man turns up dead, James faces another shocking revelation about his wife and her lover, forcing all three into a cover-up that may cost them everything.Similar DVD Movies
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