The British actor Tom Wilkinson's astonishing performance anchors SEPARATE LIES, a nuanced adult drama packed with moral dilemmas and existential questions. Julian Fellowes, who received an Academy Award for penning Robert Altman's GOSFORD PARK, makes his first foray into the director's chair with this sophisticated film, which centers around Wilkinson's repressed upper class lawyer James Manning. A well-groomed British society couple, James and his lovely, polished wife Anne (BREAKING THE WAVE's Emily Watson) live that sort of perfectly presentable life that John Cheever has made a literary career out of exposing. Cloaked under a veil of politeness, manners, and ultimately, self-delusion, they are so far deep into enacting their roles that they come to believe them. When their maid's husband is killed in a tragic hit-and-run accident in front of their vacation home, James immediately suspects that his dashing and suspicious neighborhood Bill Bule was behind the wheel. Upon telling Anne his intention to relay the hypothesis to the law, he receives some shocking news that will change his life and the lives of everyone he knows forever...