Kenneth Branagh knows how to mislead the audience using his reputation as a classic filmmaker. The greatest proof of this is found in his most recent film, Hunting in Venicethird installment of his reinvention of the adventures of Hercule Poirot, the always refined and cunning detective created by Agatha Christie.
The film, a free adaptation of the novel Halloween Partywritten by Christie and published in 1969, was long promoted before its release as a strange hybrid between the whodunit and terror. Indeed, this is what is obtained with the footage, but the mixture does not remain a simple experiment. It goes much further.
Here, although we are amazed by the skill with which both genres are fused, the surprise comes not when we realize how well the elements that belong to each of them complement each other, but when we understand that Branagh has the ability to give freshness to something that could be repetitive and tedious.
This becomes clear when analyzing the script, written by Michael Green. Green doesn’t really offer anything new on a superficial level. In the 1940s, we are faced with a retired Poirot (again played by Branagh), who is invited by his friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) to a seance that will take place after a Halloween party in the city. Italian canals and gondolas. However, after the session, unexplained murders begin to happen.
The adaptation no longer bothers to gradually introduce the audience to the usual set pieces of an Agatha Christie work. We know that Poirot doesn’t miss a beat, and that the eclectic group of people around the mystery hides deep secrets. But this is where the director’s great deception comes in: he makes us think that, since we already know the path that his works follow, this will be a simple viewing whose “simple” story will be mere entertainment.
Branagh, abruptly – perhaps too abruptly, for many people – separates this project from the excessive frivolity that covered its predecessors in the saga, Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Death on the Nile (2022). It is not that these films contributed little to the police and detective genre, but the aura of blockbuster production did stand out a lot in them. These were small parties that happened on the set, in which the cast, made up mostly of Hollywood stars, had fun reciting bombastic dialogues and solving the case in turn.
But this film chooses to present the story with a much heavier and thematically relevant atmosphere. The scares rely on the conventional trick of the jumpscare. However, they are accompanied by an omnipresent melancholy, inserted into the script to compensate for the lack of innovation in the formula of “introduction of suspects, various entanglements, resolution.”
Ghosts, which do not take long to appear, are symbols to talk about guilt, grief, skepticism and ambition. In addition, it also boasts a majestic and unartificial production design, courtesy of John Paul Kelly, who gives a modern touch to a gothic setting.
Added to this, to accentuate the elegant anguish, are the performances of the ensemble. Kenneth Branagh, Tina Fey, Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Dornan, Riccardo Scamarcio, Jude Hill, Kyle Allen and Kelly Reilly perform with subtlety in their performances, but always maintaining the power required to communicate to the audience that many more things are going on in their heads than what their looks reveal.
Hunting in Venice, then, should not be remembered only for being a work that brings together elements that are not usually together, but for the mastery with which these elements are transferred to a set that, despite being directed with theatrical sensitivity that draws heavily from the style by Hitchcock, adapts to the spirit of the current times because it dares to make us doubt what can be considered real in the midst of everything that surrounds us. Today, more than ever, we have to question everything.
José Roberto Landaverde I am fascinated by writing, listening, reading and commenting on everything related to cinema. I love music and I am a fan of The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac and Paramore. My favorite movies are Rocky and Back to the Future and obviously one day I will climb the “Philly Steps” and drive a DeLorean. Faithful believer that cinema is the best teleporting machine, and also that on the big screen we can all see ourselves represented.