A change of gear for Kenneth Branagh’s third Agatha Christie adaptation. A Haunting in Venice isn’t as starry as Murder on the Orient Express or Death on the Nile, doesn’t start out with a captive roster of possible murderers and murderees and, to an extent, abandons the strict rationality of previous Hercule Poirot adventures for something a bit more supernatural.
All three turn out to be changes for the better. This is probably the best of the bunch so far, though, full disclosure, I’m not really a fan of these things. Whether it’s Peter Ustinov, John Malkovich, Albert Finney, Ian Holm, David Suchet, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina or even Austin Trevor (first of the screen Poirots, in 1931) in the lead, there are often too many characters and actors chasing too little story in Poirot adaptations. And Christie’s impenetrable plotting – you cannot work out who done it because there’s always something she’s not telling you – throws the focus onto the performances, which are often too broad to be satisfying. It’s après-blowout Sunday-afternoon snooze-through viewing, but in that kind of slot – Christmas day with a belly full of rich food – it bosses its niche.
To an extent Branagh is aware of the shortcomings too, or appears to be, and so has scaled back the starriness a touch. 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express had the likes of Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Michelle Pfeiffer, Derek Jacobi and Judi Dench in key roles. Last year’s Death on the Nile featured Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Rose Leslie, Letitia Wright and Annette Bening. Here, no offence, Jamie Dornan, Camille Cottin, Kyle Allen and Kelly Reilly do most of the hard work in a story set in a big spooky old house in Venice, where murder most foul will be accompanied by rumours of ghost children and other supernatural goings-on.
There’s also Tina Fey, as Poirot’s old friend, Ariadne Oliver, described as “the most famous mystery writer in the world” and clearly a nod to Christie herself, who arrives in Venice to prise Poirot out of retirement and haul him off to a séance being conducted by Joyce Reynolds, a medium played at full hatstand by Michelle Yeoh. Whether Reynolds is a fake or not is what much of the film hangs on, as well as Poirot’s belief in there being a rational, non-supernatural explanation for everything. In short: be there really ghosties?
The plot is an adaptation of Christie’s novel Hallowe’en Party and Michael Green’s reworking not only shifts the action to Venice – at night, in the rain – but takes a leisurely approach to getting its characters together in the big old palazzo where murder will take place. Act one draws to a close after the first murder with a symbolic turning of a key in a lock. The throng is assembled, no one can leave and Poirot can now go to work on his captive interviewees.
A shellshocked soldier (Dornan) and his smart son (Jude Hill, who played a version of the young Kenneth Branagh in Belfast). The opera singer (Reilly) whose house this is, and at whose behest the group has assembled, so the medium (Yeoh) can conjure her dead daughter back from beyond. The former fiancé (Allen) of the dead girl. The housekeeper (Cottin). The psychic’s assistant (Emma Laird). Her half brother (Ali Khan). A bent policeman (Riccardo Scamarcio). Plus writer Ariadne Oliver, who’s obviously not going to be the person whodunit because this murder is more or less what she wrote.
Branagh the actor makes this Poirot slightly funnier, less prissy, more self-knowing and less extravagantly moustachioed than he was in previous outings, helped along by comic nudges from Tina Fey, while Branagh the director aims for a kind of 1960s British Gothic in his look. This is a lush, colourful movie lit and photographed exquisitely by Haris Zambarloukos, but in its heart it wants to be the chilly 1961 classic The Innocents.
If there’s a criticism to be made, it’s that its dénouement lacks oomph because the film has taken so long getting its characters together that it’s not had enough time to explore them. A quibble in the scheme of things. Because this is more about mood than narrative – Hildur Guðnadóttir’s haunting and spare score, Zambarloukos’s lighting, John Paul Kelly’s production design and director Branagh’s restless interest in the glories of old Venice and this grand but faded palazzo. Who cares whodunit?
A Haunting in Venice – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
