Murder in Venice: the film review by Agatha Christie

THEthe first Murder (on the Orient Express) went very well. The second (on the Nile), released at the tail end of the pandemic, much less. This Murder in Venicelatest effort by Kenneth Branagh plunderer of Agatha Christie, instead it has every appearance of returning to the box office takings of 2017. There is still the greatest mystery writer ever, there is the same screenwriter (Michael Green), but above all there is the contribution of the city of shadows and waterthe one next to the entrance ticket for too many tourists, where the plot of Poirot and the Massacre of the Innocents – a novel published in 1969 – is moved from the English countryside to the immediate post-war period.

Then there is Hercule Poirot’s turn towards horrorthe only genre that together with the biopic (but when it comes to Barbie And Oppenheimer) is good and also attracts young people. A security, considering that the usual “star cast” is a little less stellar than previous times. The only real big names are Michelle YeohOscars 2023, e Jamie Dornan. And obviously, Riccardo Scamarciothe official quota for the international production with sets on the Grand Canal (for many years a place occupied only by Giancarlo Giannini).

But, precisely, what’s the point of taking Michelle Pfeiffer and Johnny Depp if you have the most beautiful city in the world in the title. Except that everything, in Murder in Venice, takes place in a cursed palace, at night. And it’s one thing to have trains and boats traveling on routes from brochures, but it’s another to lock the group in a building, even if it’s Venetian. How does the good Kenneth resolve the impasse? With a great final spiral bird’s flight over the city, when everything is resolved and fresh air is needed for the survivors. A flyover which will also be a bow to the Venetian film commission, the copy of a thousand aerial shots typical of the crews following the Giro d’Italia, yet how much we would like it to never end.

Murder in Venicethe plot

So in this former orphanage building seems full of the ghosts of former tortured children, Poirot (Branagh) thinks fit to go at the invitation of his friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey): Bestselling mystery author except the last two. The challenge, for the infallible inspector but now retired to private life and in voluntary exile from England, is to debunk a séance held on Halloween night by the great clairvoyant Mrs. Reynolds (Yeoh). Called from Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), the owner, to attempt contact with Alicia, her daughter who committed suicide after years of an unknown illness.

Invited to the Sabbath There are also Alicia’s doctor, Leslie Ferrier (Dornan) and his 10 year old son, Leopold (Jude Hill), Alicia’s caregiver, Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin) and Hercule’s bodyguard, Vital Portfolio (Scamarcio). But not only. Reynolds and Poirot share experience in the great war, but of course – he who could be a founding member of the Cicapand she is a Rosemary Altea guest on the Maurizio Costanzo Show – they don’t understand each other. The session hides some tricks, while Poirot sees and hears children where there should be nothing.

Hercule Poirot, ghosts and singing children

Things – apparently only smoky – they become further complicated with the death of the medium, for which Hercule himself risked his life – in a dangerous mistake of identity. Which is then followed by another victim. Once the house is locked, the investigator, reluctant to get back on track, ends up questioning everyone. It’s the classic Christie no-exit stage, unity of place and death, modified by Kenneth and Green into a sideshow of sinister noises, cellars and glances from beyond. Closed taps dripping, rainwater dripping from dry walls after a check. Screams, doors flying open and who had the key. And lots of slanted shots.

The award winning Agatha revival firm It makes for a pretty interesting interlocking system, there is not a single criminal hand. This time, then, the CGI, the computer graphics that had saved the navigation on the real Nile and the real snow blocking a real convoy, is not even so invasive, so blatantly false. No, to make you suffer while watching Murder in Veniceand rather the veneer of a generalist puzzle without style, of a practical manual for scares.

Because if the risk of re-adapting Christie’s text in the lagoon is not a bad idea, however, the great writer’s estate is still needed to offer an adequate counterpoint. Even more so if the axis of the story fades, not even slightly, towards the supernatural. And the solutions are too shameless in their references, with similarities to very famous titles known even to the most naive spectator. A mix of spectacular cinema and literature that is to the detriment of both.

There’s something attractive, isn’t there, in this Poirot with fragile rationality, with his mustache thinned so you can see his mouth after the first film in which it was covered by a shawl of carnival hair. But perhaps the chilling emptiness you feel is precisely here. In the belief that the outline is enough instead of the atmosphere, that make-up is equivalent to acting, of the boredom, the sliminess, the irritation that Poirot has always aroused. And his neat but disgusting mustache. Which all those questioned by him would have snatched from him, to say the least.

In Murder in Venice these alignments are juxtaposedno character remains imprinted, and once again we return to thinking about the wonder of Bette Davis and Ingrid Bergman in 70s adaptations. Finally, on the images of Venice from above, here’s the real thrill: now that the investigator is back to work, more films will arrive soon.

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