Olivier Assayas's film on the aftermath of May 1968 is infantile ultra-leftism
JOE GLENTON explains his need to respond to a world that is unsustainably divided
ENO's production of La Boheme is a triumph,
BRITAIN has moved on since 1951, when the Nigel Balchin novel on which Julian Fellowes has based his dismal directorial debut was published.
Not that you'd guess that from seeing the anally retentive drama that he has made of this cliched saga of Home Counties adultery and deceit triggered off by a fatal hit-and-run accident in leafy Buckinghamshire.
Four-letter words and the patronising introduction of a black police inspector simply serve to underline the old-fashioned nature of a movie which would have seemed old-fashioned in the days when Rank and ABPC monopolised film production and distribution.
It's so defiantly middle class that it makes the Daily Mail resemble Marxism Today. It makes Midsomer Murders seem cutting edge by comparison.
Tom Wilkinson's betrayed husband could have strayed in off the pages of a Noel Coward parody, as could Emily Watson as his unfaithful wife.
The less said about bizarrely bronzed Rupert Everett's seducer the better.
The only thing Separate Lies proves is that Fellowes's screenwriting Oscar for Gosford Park was as ill-deserved as it seemed at the time.
When it turns up on television, switch channels at once.
ETHAN CARTER
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