Separate Lies

Rating: 3

Caught Julian Fellowes' latest at my favorite cinema last night. Definitely the most gut-wrenching film I've seen since Closer. Unfortunately, I have a problem evaluating films that draw me in to that degree. Is a film good, just because it gets to you?

Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson star in this mystery/melodrama which alternates between the streets of London and the wooded lanes of Buckinghamshire. In contrast to many American critics, I felt that their performances were quite successful. Rupert Everett, as the disdaneful spoiler of a supposedly perfect upper middle class marriage, lapses into flat sneers and whines and doesn't impress, but thankfully this doesn't ruin Wilkenson's stifled angst and Watson's sweet and maddening impetuousness.

I completely disagree with the following comment:

"There’s something to be said for 'nice', but this goes beyond proper. Everybody seems flat and unemotional - it’s more like postcard people living in a postcard town." -- Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone,

This misses the point completely. It is precisely those painfully nice scenes, when husband, wife, and lover converse quietly and tensely over drinks, that supply genius to films like Closer and Separate Lies. It is the lack of violence, the denial of retribution, that consumes.

At any rate, go see it.