Les péchés mortels

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.

Is it a war movie? Is it film noir? Is it cheap titillation? A deep exploration of complex and controversial relationships? This film cannot decide what it is and so, as another person noted, must require several viewings in order to make sense. Sadly, it is just not compelling enough to warrant multiple viewings - unlike other films that ARE rich with complex themes and artistic vision.

The actors valiantly try to overcome the morass that is the script - but were probably as annoyed as the rest of us at the myriad loose threads that never tie up.

Adrian Dunbar portrays the frustration of someone tempted and confused by things around him - he must be the avatar for the viewer. Stephen Dorff offers another workmanlike portrayal of your friendly neighborhood rebel without a clue. Gabrielle Anwar, who is usually a fine actor, is stuck with a character whose neuroses become tedious and irritating by the end of the film. Joanna Lumley escapes caricature by a false eyelash and looks luminous in the period fashions. The rest of the cast are superfluous at best and annoying distractions at worst, doing nothing to advance the story. They and the plot lines that involve them do not even qualify as decent red herrings.

The cinematography is lovely - very atmospheric and evocative of the era - as are the costumes and staging.

Unfortunately, Dewolf's grasp at Art exceeded his reach and no amount of plot devices can make this murky movie anything more than a mild diversion. Perhaps the fault lies with the editing - which would explain the subplots that disappear and other senseless oddities. A tighter script, a focused plot, and less cheap titillation would have permitted this talented cast to fully engage the viewer in a riveting mystery flick.

This film goes into areas that most others are afraid to enter and really makes the best of a great story line. It also has a cast of fantastic actors who play their roles with the right amount of mystique and venomous betrayal. I loved the character of Jeremy, he was well-played and had an amazing level of complexity. He's a completely despicable person, but you can't help but to be drawn to the cunning and disregardful nature of his character. The young lady playing Jeremy's sister is also very believable in her role as the childish, and incestuous girl who can't quite bring herself to get away from her brother. The whole movie is a work of art, and very well done.

You need to understand the times. Frightened by communist spread, many in Europe turned to Nazis for help in fighting the menace especially the wealthy. In 1938, into this milieu, a British detective, played by Adrian Dunbar, seeks to find how a friend had died. The only clue he has leads to the Graves, an English family living in France. The mother is pro Nazi. Two of the siblings seem possibly be in an incestuous relationship. Another sibling had been slain in an accident years before. This "accident" leads to blackmail and incest. This may be what the deceased friend had discovered that lead to his death.

Stephen Dorff and Gabrielle Anwar play the nearly-grown siblings. Anwar is at the peak of attractiveness. I usually hate to see girls who look like their lips have been smashed by a brick but in this one case I make an exception. She seems to want out of the relationship but can't resist Dorff's touch, even on the eve of her wedding. More murders occur as Dunbar seems about to break the case. But he, too, is under Anwar's spell. He wants to help her escape, when Dorff shows up again. I don't want to spoil it. The photography is marvelous. The music fits the scene. A enchanting look at pre-war France. And I'm sure if Hitler had seen the mother's taste in art, he'd have had her shot. I recommend it to anyone who loves crime and drama, as well as good acting.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

The cinematography of this film was brilliant, choice of location plus the genius of the camera work kept me enthralled with a shallow and convoluted plot that took red herring to waters it had never been to before. The little hamlet and eccentric interiors made an impossible film watchable, enjoyable even. The premise of the plot was the suicide or murder concept of the hero regarding the best friend and introduced in the first scenes. The rest of the movie was interwoven and seemingly totally disconnected scenes of incest or gratuitous pants dropping or bums in the buff. There were some of the scenes that served no purpose other than to expose an actor's body to the camera or tight shots of Adrian Dunbar's nose. It was as if the editors tossed the dailies up in the air and pasted them together quickly based on aesthetics rather than plot advancement. I think there was a plot at one time in the manuscript but it was discarded and the film became a series of patchwork scenes lacking cohesion. I was glad it was over though it was not easy to tell when that was going to happen because it could have been anywhere along the line. It was not a great film, a dozen yrs old and so aggravating it inspired me to take more time on it and write a 'review' on a pretty bad movie.

Stephen Dorff, being characteristically creepy in a suspicious way. A forceful, severe matriarch. Prominent sound effects and a taut, somber original score emphasizing strings. Dark, moody lighting, and crisp cinematography that seems dulled to accentuate shadow. Gabrielle Anwar, directed to at once be beautiful and alluring and also appear helpless and frightened. Whispers, soft voices; dynamic camerawork; cuts to disparate scenes of no readily apparent connection, and without immediate explanation of any, to highlight a sense of detachment, isolation, and foreboding. These are elements that are employed in 'Innocent lies' to inculcate an air of tension and suspense. It's useful for the film to do so because while there's definite mystery about the title - sufficiently strong that even without knowing it beforehand, I recognized a feeling that it was adapted from a book, and one by Agatha Christie at that - its construction doesn't necessarily supply an atmosphere of tension and suspense on its own. In fact, the described added flourishes and the writing and direction at large frankly seem to oppose one another. This movie has problems.

Even the youngest members of the cast generally perform admirably with the material they are given, serving up acting with strong nuance where they can. From a technical standpoint this is well made, and I admire the contributions of the crew behind the scenes. The production design is fetching, and the costume design, and hair and makeup work. These are no substitute, however, for writing and direction that nonetheless makes every scene, line of dialogue, and too much of every performance feel disconnected and less than earnestly meaningful. We rather seem to get a portrait in miniature, one piece at a time, of how director Patrick Dewolf and his collaborators imagines it all should look in a mystery, thriller, drama, and/or film noir - only, the detachment and isolation that is added into the picture kind of extends to each constituent part. 'Innocent lies' is a theoretical patchwork quilt that is very carefully arranged, save for that the stitches between distinct patches are hopelessly loose, and still so thick and heavy that they overshadow what they're supposed to be holding together.

It's so very odd. All the components are here for what should be a rich, engaging, compelling movie, including subtle airs of psychological drama. I can tell how much effort went into it. By some weird set of circumstances I can't fully describe, however, the whole is notably less than the sum of its parts. There's what a movie could or should be, and then there's what it is or the impression it makes - unwieldy, unconvincing, perhaps even contrived. I don't absolutely dislike 'Innocent lies,' and even with nasty themes on the edges including incest and fascism (content warning, folks) it's a narrative that has significant potential. That potential simply isn't borne out.

I expect and hope that there are viewers who watch this and get more out of it than I do. I just think it's too messy and underwhelming to particularly inspire. There are worse films you could watch, but with so many better ones out there, too, there's no overwhelming reason why 'Innocent lies' deserves your time over another.