Julian Fellowes is the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Robert Altman's Gosford Park. His directorial debut is Separate Lies, an adaptation of Nigel Balchin's 1951 novel, A Way Through the Wood.
Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson play upper crust lawyer, James Manning and his charming wife, Anne. They live an idyllic existence with a house in London and one in the country.
James assumes their marriage is secure until the husband of their cleaner Maggie (Linda Bassett) is the victim of a hit and run near their country home.
At first James suspects the driver to be their arrogant neighbour, Bill Bule (Rupert Everett). But the reality is much worse.
Bill is having an affair with Anne and she was also involved in the car accident. James is left with an ethical dilemma and reluctantly decides to protect his own reputation, by joining the deception.
Separate Lies explores what happens when moral responsibility comes face to face with self-interest. Themes of deceit and hypocrisy in the middle class are interwoven into a drama about three people making very poor decisions.
It's good material, but the two main themes of marital break up and criminal liability, are handled inconsistently.
Fellowes' direction of Wilkinson and Watson, showing us a relationship on the brink is excellent, and the two actors are very good, but his direction is stilted in scenes relating to the hit and run, which plays out like a conventional crime story.
By focusing on the police investigation, which wasn't part of the original novel, Fellowes diverts our attention away from the love triangle, which ends up diluting his very pertinent observations about how these upper middle class characters deal with betrayal and relationships.
