Starring: Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson and Rupert Everett
Director: Julian Fellowes
Rated: M
SEPARATE Lies is an elegant and intelligent adult drama.
Director, writer and actor Julian Fellowes won a screenplay Oscar for Gosford Park.
He is obviously comfortable in exploring themes and characters in an upper middle class world where the men work in the City of London but have weekend cottages in the Buckinghamshire countryside and the women support the men (or leave to find lives of their own).
Based on a novel by Nigel Balchin, Separate Lies is a complex story, one where all the characters are differing shades of grey in their moral stances – no easy black and white solutions.
Tom Wilkinson, in a finely controlled performance (which sometimes breaks out irrationally), is a successful lawyer.
Emily Watson is also successful in subtly suggesting the moods of his loving but sometimes dithering wife who is discovering how unhappy she is.
When the husband of the woman who does their house is killed in a hit-run accident, the lying begins.
Characters are prepared to cover up. Others believe in truth and justice until it touches themselves and do about-faces.
The repercussions of the events on the marriage are devastating.
Rupert Everett is able to portray cads without effort and does so here.
Linda Bassett, very moving as the widow, becomes the focus of attention at the end and lays before the audience the moral issues and how truth and justice can be handled.
In many ways, this is a traditional British drama associated with the BBC.
It takes place in a privileged world but its themes are universal.
