I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Just what I expected

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I agree with other commenters that the acting was intense (life-like? depends on whose life it's supposed to be), but what irritated me most was the contempt of law.A cyclist is killed in a car accident. This certainly is a crime, but the police (embodied by a single black, and obviously contempted, officer) try to solve the case in vain. The titular Lies prevent that. And the second funeral, of the adultering "milord", seems to be of more interest than the first, the accident victim.I like cynical movies where sympathetic perpetrators win in the end, but here? I'd have preferred better police work (even with Miss Marple or such) that would have solved the case.

This tale of the upper-classes getting their come-uppance and wallowing in their high-class misery is like a contemporary Mid-Sommerish version of an old Joan Crawford movie in which she suffered in mink. Here, people behave in a frightfully civilized manner in the face of adversity. A well-heeled London solicitor, (Tom Wilkinson), discovers that not only is his wife having an affair with the local gentry but that she has also killed their housekeeper's husband in a hit-and-run accident. He throws up, but otherwise his stiff-upper-lip hardly quavers.Written and directed by Julian Fellowes, who won an Oscar for writing "Gosford Park", (this is his directorial debut), from a novel by Nigel Balchin, it's quite comical although I am not sure how much of the comedy is intended. It's like a throw-back to British films of the forties where characters all behaved like characters in books or plays rather than like people might in real life. However, it's not all bad. Wilkinson is terrific, even if you never believe in him as a person while Emily Watson, (the adulterous wife), and Rupert Everett, (the highly amoral high-class totty), are both very good at covering the cracks in the material. Tony Pierce-Roberts' cinematography ensures that no matter how hard it is on the ear it's always good on the eye.

I was pulled into this movie early on, much to my surprise, because I hadn't intended to watch it at all. Now I wish I hadn't. The suspense starts out well, with the hit-and-run resulting in death and the question of whether the guilty character will confess, or be found out, or (doable now, though a no-no in the old days of movie-making) get away with it. The plot's been done before--what plot hasn't--but the tensions inherent in it, with the additional complications and motivations arising out of the illicit love affair, make for an absorbing first half. Then the film abandons the hit-and-run to embark upon a misty exposition of two unrequited, all-suffering loves. The two tracks of plot--hit-and-run and unreasoning love--just don't have enough to do with each other, and that they involve the same characters doesn't bind them enough to justify the departure from the original story line. The screenwriter should have chosen one plot or the other. At the end of the film, in the midst of the movie's second funeral, I found myself thinking, "Now, what does any of this have to do with that hit-and-run?" The filmmakers may think the answer obvious, but I think the movie was plotted and executed flabbily.

..we weave, and you know the rest of that.deception, adultery, guilt, spinelessness, accidental murder, nature's retribution, did i leave anything out?i'm not sure i buy the husband's argument that his wife's felony would ruin his reputation. it's his wife's problem, not his, and it probably would not have done much harm.now i can see the need to protect the one you love, but i guess if i found out my wife was cheating, and the rest of the story, i probably would have turned her in. but that's just me. justice and all that.then there's God's punishment on Bill. How neat and tidy.but the end at least was the logical one, no goofy surprises.