Separate Lies

To the Indian summer of his career which has already garnered an Oscar for the screen play of Gosford Park, Julian Fellowes adds the distinguished writing and directing credits for this cinematic gem. Like all the best British films it is about class, but in this case additionally rather more about truth, love, and fidelity.

At the heart of the story is the ménage a trios involving James, a top city solicitor, played by Tom Wilkinson, his childless wife Anne, and the louchely aristocratic Bill Bule, played to languid perfection by Rupert Everett. The working class is represented by Maggie, James and Anne's cleaner, whose husband is knocked down and killed by a 4X4 Land-Rover belonging to Bill. James suspects Bill is to be the killer. When confronted with this suggestion he at first lies, but then confesses he is responsible.


But before the offence can be reported and justice take its course, James discovers two devastating facts: it was Anne who was actually driving the vehicle; and she has been having an affair with Bill for some time. James now reverses his position, torn between love of his wife and hateful jealousy of Bill. He soon joins the conspiracy to hush up the fatal accident.

Anne from the start wants to confess her crime, but neither man can allow her to take the consequences. She behaves both honestly and appallingly, drawing her hapless husband behind her as she follows her heart. All three become complicit in the deception and the infidelity. James is agonized, Bill apparently detached and aloof, and Anne helplessly driven by her emotions. It is Maggie, the cleaner - once also employed by Bill - who suffers the real consequences and whose generosity of spirit finally unravels the knot created by the lies.

Eventually Bill receives punishment and Anne redemption of a kind, whilst James remains the victim of a wife with a destructive instinct for love and for the truth. The intensity of all three major performances is extraordinary, illuminating a story (based on the 1951 novel A Way Through the Wood by Nigel Balchin) about the turbulence which can rage beneath the calm glossy exteriors of the English social and economic elite.

Tom Wilkinson, it appears, can play anything - from the comedy of The Full Monty to the heartbreaking grief of In the Bedroom — and now this. Emily Watson is nothing short of luminous as the suburban femme fatale and Rupert Everett - maybe a little typecast as a decadent aristo - is nevertheless superb. Visually too, the film excels with sumptuous scenes of the Home Counties, not to mention Llandudno, North Wales. To my mind this was one of the best films released in 2005 but for the most part, its merits passed by unnoticed.