"Dark Obsession" is a stylish, sexy story of the place where love becomes something darker, and where friendship and loyalty to an ideal become a reason to circumvent justice at all costs. When a drunk English aristocrat (Gabriel Byrne) driving a friend's car accidentally kills a woman, his friends cover it up. When one of them has a crisis of conscience, he is obliquely warned to examine where his loyalties lie. Meanwhile, the aristocrat's wife (Amanda Donohoe) is wrestling with her own marital secrets and her own obsessions.
Directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield, "Dark Obsession" is one of the most chilling ever dramatic commentaries on the British class system and its codes of honour. The film may be too sophisticated for the average American viewer to pick up the nuances (as seen by the other review of this film in this forum) but stands alone as a superb family drama with stellar performances from Byrne, Donohoe, as well as the incomparable Judy Parfitt as the family matriarch, and is one of the most underrated films of its kind. Highly recommended.
