Screen adaptations of Christie's books usually play fast and loose with the original story and plot, with varying degrees of success. I always marvel at the audacity and hubris of producers and adapters confident that THEY know how to tell a story better than Christie herself, what a laugh - where is THEIR record of sales topped only by the Bible? In recent years they've been going kind of wild with very ambitious, high-gloss productions of Poirot, the results of which have been uneven to say the least, from "Five Little Pigs" (sublime) to "Sad Cypress" (hmmm) to "Taken at the Flood" (a vile wretched grade-Z trainwreck, and criminal waste of talented actors).
This one manages to come off fairly well, although there is considerable tinkering with the original story. The camera-work makes heavy use of diffusion filters throughout, giving the effect of the entire story taking place in a kind of a dreamy beige fairy-tale haze.
The lead Harriet Walter is an actress whom I respect, and who in the past I have repeatedly tried and failed to warm up to. Here she is less guarded and unusually accessible, and does an excellent job, in spite of the bizarre "period" hair and makeup inflicted on her.
My French isn't very good, but it seemed to me that the script had Poirot (and Mlle Blanche) using expressions that would never come out of the mouth of a native speaker. Also I had the English subtitles on while I watched the DVD, and there were some hilarious mistakes in the French, for example "pas du tout" showed up as "pas do tout", "oui, bien sûr" as "oui, bien, sure", and "Je vous en prie" showed up as - I swear! - "je vous emprie"!! I was in stitches and wondering what next, were they going to render "oui" as "wee" or something? Maybe it was done by computer voice-recognition software? Good lord, hire somebody who has a clue, or have someone competent copy-edit it.
