Innocent Lies

If you like longing glances into the misty distance, unmotivated yet psychotic incest, and daft police work, you'll love this waste of time and film.

The casting director clearly liked a specific "look" of female. As a result, I spent the first half of the movie just trying to keep the female characters straight. Beautiful women are not enough to save this flimsiest of scripts, however.

I feel cheated. I could've been playing solitaire. It would've been equally fulfilling. Clearly, I do not recommend this movie. I was hoping for so much more from a largely watchable cast.

I am a passionate lover of movies and actors. American, foreign, documentaries, independent- all kinds of movies. I usually try to find the silver lining in every movie I watch. Hard work and risk taking deserve at least that much from a viewer. This movie was very irritating to watch. It didn't even follow it's own plot. It would pick up and drop story lines randomly without any logic. Relationships were contrived, some to shock, some for lack of better ideas. Acting was not very inspired, it's hard to see how could it possibly be with this script. It was messy, unfinished and irritating. So much for silver lining on this one.

Very good movie even though a bit complicated to follow when seen for the first time. It is one of those movies you need to see at least twice to fully appreciate it. The principal actors, first of all Gabrielle Anwar, and Stephen Dorff, are outstanding. Noteworthy is also Patrick Blossier´= s excellent photography.

Having said that I still think with this highly imaginative and original story at his hands Patrick Dewulf could have done more, simply by concentrating on the main characters. There are too many subplots there that are rather superfluous in that they do not contribute to the main story which is intense enough and need not be pepped up.

But still: An excellent movie! I highly recommend it.

I tend to like movies like this one- quiet, destined to be seen on TV late at night after some red wine to quench insomnia. Yeah... some called it a bore, but so was Mansfield Park...to an extent. it's been quite a while since I have seen it and the details are a bit fuzzy, but if a movie of its rank made it in the realm of my daily wanderings, then it has to have at least one quality. Maybe I liked the setting,the cold morning air-the blue air that conveys darkness and mystery to most Poirot series or the landscapist pov it offered at times just to be changed with the eye of a mute detective at others. I almost liked those, but not quite. Being very fond of art, this movie reminded me of Tamara de Lempicka's paintings: very art deco, showing us more than just a glimpse of the 30s aristocracy, very daring without excelling in creativity. just that. the ending was unsurprising,not really a letdown but the deranged late 30s atmosphere, the uncontrollable animalism depicted in different character liaisons saved it.

I believe Towards Zero to be one of Christie's best and when I read there was an adaptation that her usually quite tolerant estate had declined any involvement with (an extremely rare occurrence to the chagrin of some Christie purists), I went out to search for it.

The setting is both beautiful and poignant. An Art Deco Villa on a clifftop in 1938 France, undercurrents of the coming war rippling even through the lives of the well-off family at the centre of the story.

British detective Adrian Dunbar, along with his small daughter, visits to bury his old friend, a fellow cop, who apparently and very suddenly has committed suicide. It appears said cop came to investigate the death of a young member of the aptly named Graves family many years ago and never left. What his relationship with the Graves' exactly entailed we never find out (the matriarch insists they had an affair, but her word is as good as anyone else's in this movie, which is no good at all). I guess it would count as a spoiler if there was anything to spoil, that we also never find out what happened to him.

Two things are quite clear from the start. The slimy Oxford student son Jeremy is the most likely suspect and his relationship with his sister is not sisterly in the least. Again, no surprises will reveal themselves on either account.

The hard boiled detective naturally falls immediately under the spell of the beautiful daughter Celia and risks his career to help her escape - from what exactly, not even she herself seems to know. Numerous other storylines are woven (and mostly dropped without any resolution). Various females are upset with the detective, but since they won't tell him why, the film also doesn't care any longer. Motives of anyone are foggy at best and often change from scene to scene. Some sequences are almost Lynchian in their absurdity and their lack of any connection to the plot, but feel much more accidental. The most consistent part is the camera following around young Celia to expose her body from every angle possible.

The ending scene wakes memories rather more of Dial M for Murder than Towards Zero, but I doubt either would like to be associated with this film. In fact, despite some effort, I could find no traces of the intricate plot Christie had woven for Towards Zero. No perfect alibi, no sinister end goal, no double bluff. Instead we get to see Gabrille Anwar's breasts under a variety of semi-translucent fabrics. I guess that counts for something.