Another Life

Good performance, good production quality . even Plot is not that new, its same as most typical domestic relationship problems.

there are some drawbacks n little flaws but its ok because its early 2000 movie.

a jolly british girl marries her bf , which she likes him in start but later, the marriage is passionless, (especially sex n feelings). so later wife gets acquaintance her young sister ONE TIME bf, he is handsome also better job than husband. later she falls for him , and she fall hard. Even she sarcastically insulted husband at lunch or dinner about his job. thats really bad example of wife.

the affairs continues , but anyhow , cheating /adultery is bad thing , which this movie shows perfectly in the end.

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As the movie based in true story , i think its kinda little harsh but really good punishment , as Wife cheated and she actually feeds hate n violence in terms of imagination to her lover. so basically she is guilty. she could divorce husband n go for another guy . but early 90s , family dont want divorce so she stuck. british people..pfff.

I was interested to see this film as a relative of mine shared a flat with one of the Thompson family and my family remember the case as we came from the same area. Another connection is that I was an extra on the film. The clothes we had to wear weren't Edwardian at all it was definitely twenties. The film seems to have vanished and having searched on Amazon I found it is on DVD so I am looking forward to seeing it at last. As it was made in 2001 I would like to know where it has been hiding all this time. In the court scenes that I was in Natasha Little and Ioan Gruffudd were excellent. It seems a shame that it didn't publicised further because it definitely should have been seen far and wide.

There are a few references throughout the reviews to ' Edwardian England' . As Edward the Seventh died in 1910, thus ending the Edwardian Age and as Edith and her husband didn't marry until 1916 ,these are obviously misleading .It is more a picture of English society undergoing a social transformation after the War , in the so-called 'roaring 20's '.

As to the film , it had very solid performances from all concerned although I felt that the conclusion (especially the trial scenes ) was rather too rushed . I always find Ms Little a magical screen presence .Her ability to play confident but vulnerable women is particularly suited to the role .

I hope to see this film one day. I don't even recall it being released in the U.S.

The Thompson - Bywaters Case of 1922 - 23 was one of the great disgraces of British Justice. Edith Thompson was accused of instigating her boyfriend, Frederick Bywaters, in stabbing her husband Percy on a street in London at night. To his credit, Frederick denied her involvement - he claimed he killed Percy for mistreating Edith. Unfortunately for Edith (a woman with a big imagination) letters she wrote to Bywaters were preserved by him, and they suggested that she had tried to poison Percy on several occasions. Problem was that the crown pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, never found traces of the so-called poisons. The solution by the prosecution: ignore Sir Bernard (normally trotted out at every major criminal prosecution at the time) and concentrate on the evidence that Edith and Frederic were committing adultery. Although ably defended by Sir Henry Curtis Bennett, Edith made the mistake of going into the witness box, and she suddenly panicked inside it. It sank whatever chances she had. The jury found her and Frederick guilty, and they were executed.

The judge at the trial, Mr. Justice Shearman, had been junior to Edward Marshall Hall in defending the notorious wife murderer George Joseph Smith, and yet he made comments about how sickened he was by Ms Thompson - more sick than at any other killer he came across. The prosecutor was Sir Thomas Inskip. Whatever one says of his ability in railroading Mrs. Thompson, Inskip would mis-serve his country in the late 1930s when he purposely slowed down the rearmament programs of the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments in the face of growing Nazi aggression. These two were the defenders of English hearth and home in this case.

The play A PIN TO SEE A PEEP SHOW is based on a novel by F. Tennyson Jesse, an noted criminal historian (and descendant of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson). It is a retelling of the Thompson tragedy.

The conviction and execution of Edith Thompson is now generally considered to be a miscarriage of justice. I rather thought that that would be the focus of this film. It's not. It's mostly about a failed marriage and an adulterous affair. The murder and the aftermath of it are skimmed over. It is fairly apparent in this depiction that Thompson had no part in the murder but, since the investigation and trial are barely portrayed, it's rather hard to see how she ended up getting hanged for murder. It happened, as far as I can see as a consequence of a weak jury who were unduly influenced by the prejudiced summing up of a rotten old misogynistic judge. Even with that judge she might have survived if she had been properly represented and this dim jury had had the law, and the burden of proof properly explained. That's the story that the film should have concentrated on.