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Separate Lives
Movie opens with an elderly gent traveling by bicycle down an English country village road deplete of any modern vehicles toward destination unknown. A quick flash of steel sweeps by and plants this man along side the winding road in need of medical attention.
Flash backward to before this event and meet what appears to be a normal happy married couple going about their daily lives in ordinary fashion. James Manning (Tom Wilkinson) a professional man of soliciting who works in the city by day and retires to the countryside to escape the madness by night. Anne Manning (Emily Watson) is his pretty blonde wife whom appears not to be his equal intellectually and who seems a little aloof at times. She does her best to keep up and makes the extra effort of meeting up with her husband when he arrives back from a long day at work.
It doesn’t take long to realize that Anne is not really satisfied with her husband due to his exceedingly high standards that she never feels that she can live up to and his obsessive love for his work where he spends most of his time and where all his conversations seem to lead. This dissatisfaction manifests into an infatuation in a newly acquired acquaintance William Bule (Rupert Everett) a recently divorced father of two young boys.
James starts to realize something is not right when one day his wife is there to meet him upon his return from work and outside is William whom is becoming a frequent sight in both there lives. News is received that their cleaner’s husband was hit by a vehicle and is near death in the nearby hospital. Both rush to be by her side and to get the story as to how it happened. Info reveled triggers a chain of events that start out as noble and correct and end in a spiral of deceit for all involved.
This movie looked and felt great. I liked everything but the convoluted ending that didn’t provide enough closure to all that preceded it. Nice look at infidelity and how murder can provide assistance on par with a marriage counselor.
B-
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