I've been trying to get into reading mysteries lately, including classic Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and The Seven Dials Mystery (1929): one of her earlier works, while she's still fumbling around to create an ongoing amateur sleuth. A tv adaption has dropped on Netflix, starring Corey Mylchreest, who is straight but likes to pretend to be gay. So maybe he'll be pretending here, too.
Prologue: An elderly man walks through Ronda, an Andalusian village about an hour from Malaga., with beautiful establishing shots. He enters the empty Plaza de Toros and checks his watch, and finds a note (a picture of a clock). Suddenly a bull rushes out and gores him to death!
Scene 1: Chimneys, a stately country house in Gloucester, 1925. A party, with everyone wearing masks and being decadent. Lady Caterham (Helena Bonham Carter) and her daughter Bundle hate the ghastly masks, but they had no choice; it was the idea of Lord and Lady Coote, to whom they are indebted. Lord Coote wants to meet George Lomax, so they can form a relationship: "His Foreign Office, my steel factories."
Lol, I can't hear the name Coote without thinking of Cornelius Coot, who founded the city of Duckburg in Disney comics.
Bundle, apparently the focus character, continues to mingle. She approaches Ronny (gay actor Nabhaan Rizwan, right) and his Boyfriend (Hughie O'Donnell), who explain that their mate Gerry hasn't gotten up before noon all week, so they're going to prank him with seven alarm clocks hidden in various places in his room.
Next, she talks to Gerry (Corey Mylchreest, top photo, butt left). He gawks with Girl of My Dreams hetero-horniness, and tells Bundle how incredibly gorgeous she is. Ok, so he won't be pretending to be gay in this one. She counters that he is incredibly gorgeous as well. They gaze at each other for about five minutes, then he asks her to dinner, and implies that he's going to propose. The gazing continues. I'm fast-forwarding past it.
Scene 2: Cut to the boyfriends giggling as they hide alarm clocks in various places in Gerry's room. Then to a card game, with Bundle and Boy of Her Dreams Gerry continuing to gaze at each other while the others chitchat. Jimmy (Edward Bluemel, butt left) joins them.
Then raucous Jazz Age dancing and more gazing.
The boyfriends are not dancing. They are engrossed with each other. I think they're a canonical couple.
Bundle drops Gerry to mingle, then goes out into the garden.
Scene 3: Morning. Establishing shot of the country house surrounded by marshland. Ronny and his Boyfriend complain of being hungover, and fill their plates. The others arrive, equally hungover.
At 11:15, the alarm clocks go off in Gerry's room. He's not turning them off, so they send the Butler to wake him. Then Bundle goes. She finds that Gerry is...dead!
Cut to the doctor (Tristan Gemmill, left), who finds a sleeping draft next to the bed. Gerry must have taken a draft to help him sleep, and since he was drunk, the combination was lethal.
"Impossible!" Bundle exclaims. "He never used sleeping drafts!" And she knows what he did before bed because....
"Then maybe it was deliberate?" the doctor suggests.
The Boyfriend: "Well, he was stressed at work. His boss, George Lomax, was always riding him."
"No way! Impossible! He was planning to propose to me."
Next up: a bumbling detective, on his first case, ineptly examines the crime scene while making jokes. Bundle thinks that it was a murder. Otherwise be lousy story.
"Wait -- there are seven clocks on the mantle. I thought you guys hid them?" The Boyfriends glance at each other in shock.
More after the break
Scene 4: Downstairs, Lady Coote (the one Bundle and her mum are indebted too) is arguing with the Maid, but before Bundle can eavesdrop, Jimmy interrupts to ask how she's holding up and note that he loved Gerry, too. Tell me more about your love, but first explain why Agatha Christie creates major characters named Gerry, Jimmy, and Ronny.
The Cootes and their Secretary (Tim Preston), are leaving. The death has ruined their weekend. Poor dears.
Big Reveal: The Secretary went to school with Gerry and the Dead Brother. Mum sneers at him and calls him Pongo, because in spite of his education, he's still lower class. I seem to recall that Pongo was an ape, but I can't find a reference online.
In the car, they all glare suspiciously at Bundle.
Scene 5: Lots of Hitchcockian shots of people climbing staircases and mirrors distorting things, as Bundle returns to Gerry's room and feverishly goes through his stuff, looking for clews (as they were called). Not finding anything, she screams and attacks his desk. A hidden letter, to his Sister Lorraine: Gerry says that he shouldn't have mentioned the Seven Dials; please forget that he said anything. So he was murdered for revealing the existence of the secret society.
Next, as they're walking to put flowers on the tomb of Bundle's Dead Brother and Father, Bundle asks about the Seven Dials, but Mum has never heard of it. She also doesn't know anything about Lady Coote's argument with the Maid.
Scene 6: While walking morosely through the garden labyrinth, Bundle finds an alarm clock lying on the grass. She calls Ronny at work: no, he and his Boyfriend did didn't leave it there. Nor did they put the clocks on the mantle; they hid them around the room. Gerry must have found them and put them there before going to bed.
"Then why didn't he turn the alarms off?"
"I don't know. Also, we hid eight, but only seven appeared on the mantle." Well, it's Seven Dials, not Eight Dials.
They agree to go to the Inquest together, to push toward the death being classified as "foul play."
Scene 7: No one on the household staff noticed a sleeping draft bottle on Gerry's night stand -- it must have been placed there after they finished checking on him. Nor did they move the alarm clocks.
Next stop: Emily, the Maid who argued with Lady Coote. She's in her room, crying. Lady Coote was impossible: "She'll ask you for something, and when you bring it, say that she asked for something else, and why are you such an idiot?" She gave Emily a bottle of laudanum to help her sleep, so she wouldn't be such an idiot the next day. But it was stolen the night of the party. And used on Gerry!
But who knew she had it? Lady Coote! Red herring.
Scene 8: Bundle and Ronny complaining about the Inquest: "death by misadventure" (accident). "We should have told them about the clocks." Why didn't you?
A mysterious trenchcoat man (Martin Freeman) is staring at them; he rushes into a pub.
Next they interrogate Lady Coote: "Why didn't you tell the Inquest that the laudanum bottle was yours?
"Um...er...because I'm a red herring."
Next Bundle shows Ronny the letter about the Seven Dials. "Surely this means something."
"Let it go!" Not wanting to get involved makes you look suspicious, bro. "Why do you care, anyway?"
"Gerry was my brother's close friend." Also, you were dating him, remember?
"Ok, I'll make some inquiries."
Scene 9: After Ronny leaves, Bundle follows the mysterious man in the trenchcoat as he steps into a telephone booth, notices her approaching, and abruptly leaves. She manages to find the number he was calling: Scotland Yard!
Bundle asks to borrow Mum's car so she can drive to Scotland Yard and investigate Gerry's death further. "Absolutely not! You'll get yourself killed, and I've suffered enough loss already!" How would going to the police get you killed? Unless Mum knows something...
Bundle takes the car anyway, and Mum turns to the photograph of her late husband. "She's too much like you!" Big Reveal: it's the guy who was bull-gored in the prologue! He was in the secret society!
Scene 10: As Bundle drives to London, a telephone rings. A clawlike hand picks it up. Then another and another. The feet of people in black robes enter a room.
Back home, the Butler brings in an anonymous note addressed to Bundle. Mum asks him to read it: "Keep your nose out of the Seven Dials, or it will be the end of you!"
Cut to Bundle driving down a very narrow road through high hedges. Uh-oh, there's a dying man in the path -- Ronny! He murmurs "The Seven Dials. Tell Jimmy" as he dies. How did they find out that he was asking too many questions, grab him, and arrange to shoot him in the 30-40 minutes it would take Bundle to go home, get the car keys, and drive toward London?
The end.
Beefcake: None. Gerry even wears a nightshirt to bed.
Left: Nyasha Hatendi will eventually appear as Dr. Cyril Natip.
Other Sights: I was annoyed that we saw Spain only in the prologue.
Heterosexism: The Bundle-Gerry gaze is exceptionally over-acted.
Gay Characters: Ronny and the Boyfriend display some queer codes, but I can't really call his murder a Bury Your Gays moment, since I'm not sure he is canonical. Still, I imagine that there will be no gay potential in the rest of the series.
Differences from the Novel: Most significantly: Bundle's father is alive and not really relevant to the story; several guys, not just Ronny and his Boyfriend, plan the prank; and Bundle and Gerry have no romantic interest. I guess contemporary audiences want her to have a more emotional reason for investigating.
My Grade: B if there are other queer-coded characters; otherwise C.
No comments:
Post a Comment