The end credits song, performed by Australian singer Kate Ceberano, with music by Nerida Tyson-Chew and lyrics by Richard Franklin, was nominated for Best Original Song for a Feature Film, Mini-Series, Telemovie or TV Series, at the 1997 Australian Guild of Screen Composers Awards.
Director Richard Franklin's first encounter with 'Brilliant Lies' was a scaled down stage version
featuring the original cast at Frankston in Victoria, Australia shortly after its main Melbourne theatre
season also in Victoria, Australia.
The dramatic interplay of sex and power within
'Brilliant Lies' afforded filmmaker Richard Franklin an electrifying project
following his acclaimed screen adaptation of Hannie Rayson's poignant
drama, 'Hotel Sorrento'.
The idea of adding flashbacks was the idea of co-screenwriter Peter Fitzpatrick. The
screenplay remained very close to David Williamson's original source stage play with the major
difference between the stage production and this movie version being the addition of flashbacks. These flashbacks illustrate the wildly differing
perceptions of the central harassment issue and the public hearing at the
finale - the play having ended in the conciliation room.
Of the story, to quote the film's source playwright David Williamson, "there are two stories going on simultaneously in 'Brilliant Lies'. One is the story of Susy, trying to get $40,000 out of her ex-employer for
harassment. The other story is that of the two sisters, Susy and Katy, trying to
come to terms with their rather difficult family past involving their father
and their brother...I think part of the reason the girls, Katy and Susy, behave
the way they do in the present is to do with what happened with them in the
past, and so we, the audience, have to see eventually what did happen to
them...".