Directed by: Kenneth Branagh
Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Tina Fey, Kyle Allen, Kelly Reilly, Jamie Dornan, Michelle Yeoh, Camille Cottin
Kenneth Branagh doesn't remake a previous film based on Agatha Christie novels this time, but instead adapts a later work with A Haunting in Venice, which is dark and I don't mean the subject matter. The bulk of the movie takes place in a rumored Venice haunted house on Halloween night, 1947. As the movie opens, legendary detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) is long retired from active duty, but is still solicited almost daily to work cases. He has hired a bodyguard to keep people from bothering him, but one morning his old friend, crime novelist Ariadne Oliver (Fey) comes calling with a request too hard to pass up.
Ariadne does not have a murder to solve, but wants Poirot to try and debunk psychic Jenny Reynolds (Yeoh) who will be contacting a dead woman at a seance scheduled for Halloween night at a supposedly haunted house, where the poor girl was allegedly driven by demons to jump from the top floor into the canal below to her death. Ariadne so far has not been able to spot any fakery on Ms. Reynolds' part, which is why Poirot is brought in. However, a simple debunking makes way for a murder when Ms. Reynolds is found murdered following a fairly convincing communication with the deceased.
As usual with Christie novels and films, the suspects are rounded up, interrogated, accused of the murder, and then Poirot gathers them all in a room (typically following a second murder) and deduces the identity of the culprit. The suspects here are Ariadne, Poirot's bodyguard (a former police officer who responded to the call the night the haunted woman died), the girl's mother (Reilly), the girl's heartbroken lover (Allen), and a doctor (Dornan) who is in love with the girl's mother. Oh and there's a an accented nanny (Cottin) who may have had something to gain from all of this death. What prevents the suspects from leaving? A torrential storm outside, of course, which plays like a Deus ex Machina.
A Haunting in Venice was shot in so much darkness it's hard to tell what is happening, making A Haunting in Venice the gloomiest of the Christie movies. The movie follows the Poirot playbook and there is comfort in such uniformity. Hercule Poirot is famous enough and has solved so many cases that those in his presence should know that they'll be questioned and eventually pinpointed as the murderer, but then so will everyone else. Why anyone would want to commit a murder in Poirot's presence is beyond my comprehension. Not much slips by this man. Why would this time be any different?
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