BEYOND OUR KEN
A HAUNTING IN VENICE The ’tec with the ’tash grapples with the ghostly in Kenneth Branagh’s third Poirot outing.
He solved a Murder on the Orient Express. He got to the bottom of a Death on the Nile. A Haunting in Venice, though, may finally be a match for Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells in Kenneth Branagh’s third starry helping of Agatha Christie mystery.
Director-star-producer Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green stuck with the tried and tested for the first two instalments of what has now become a trilogy of vehicles for the former’s take on Christie’s canny Belgian. (Both Murder and Death were famously filmed in the 1970s, with Albert Finney playing Poirot in the first and Peter Ustinov taking over in the second.) With A Haunting in Venice, however, they have gone decidedly off-piste, opting instead to adapt a far more obscure entry in the canon: 1969’s Hallowe’en Party, a country-house whodunnit of middling repute whose most noteworthy feature – beside a cameo from Ariadne Oliver, a fictional writer of detective stories generally considered to be Aggie’s alter ego – is the affectionate dedication it contains to author P.G. Wodehouse.
Largely overlooked by all but Christie’s most devoted readers, Hallowe’en Party’s chief calling card prior to this year was the 2010 chapter of ITV’s Poirot series – an episode that, coincidentally enough, happened to have Sir Ken’s former mother- and sister-in-law (Phyllida Law and Sophie Thompson) in supporting roles. (Filmgoers might also recall the book being among the Christmas gifts that Jude Hill’s Buddy unwraps in Branagh’s 2021 Oscar-winner Belfast.) According to Christie’s great-grandson and A Haunting in Venice’s executive producer James Prichard, though, the novel’s nods to the paranormal are just what the franchise needs.
‘If we are going to continue to make these films, we can’t do the same thing over and over,’ he tells Teasers. ‘A departure at this moment is possibly risky, but it also has the potential to keep it alive, bring in a different audience, and do something interesting that will hopefully surprise and delight.’
Set in Italy’s lagoon city after World War Two, the story finds Poirot – effectively now retired and living in selfimposed exile – reluctantly persuaded by his old friend Ariadne (Tina Fey) to attend a seance conducted by ‘the unholy Miss Joyce Reynolds’ (Michelle Yeoh), a clairvoyant and psychic with a flair for the dramatic and a penchant for carnival masks. To Poirot, Joyce is just ‘an opportunist who preys on the vulnerable’ that well deserves the scepticism of Ariadne and others. (‘I must tell you, madame, I have been all my life uncharmed by your kind,’ he tells her.) For grieving mother Rowena (Yellowstone’s Kelly Reilly), though, she’s a cond
