Teresa Reviews “A Pocket Full of Rye” (2009)

Fidelity to text: 4 and 1/2 poison bottles.
ITV Productions is unreliable when it comes to fidelity to text but in this case, they were virtually letter-perfect. Miss Ramsbottom was eliminated, as were a few minor housemaids, secretaries, and such. Miss Marple gets one of Inspector Neele’s scenes.

Quality of movie on its own: 4 poison bottles.
I really enjoyed this film, Julia McKenzie’s first outing as Miss Marple. The ending was spot-on, with the post office contributing to the mystery by misdirecting the mail. The Joan Hickson version cheated on this issue. What didn’t I like? Julia McKenzie. I kept seeing Jessica Fletcher and not Miss Marple! Joan Hickson and Geraldine McEwan both fit my mental picture of Miss Marple. Like Angela Lansbury herself in The Mirror Crack’d (1980), Julie McKenzie didn’t make me think Edwardian-era spinster.

ITV Productions veer all over the map when it comes to adapting Agatha’s novels. In this case, every minor deletion contributed to a better movie overall. It tightened the plot, keeping it focused on the Fortescue family and their circle. It also, unlike other ITV films didn’t “improve” Agatha’s own text by making up complications out of whole cloth.

In some cases, the improvements do improve the movie. What works in a novel doesn’t generate the drama that a film needs. In A Pocket Full of Rye, Miss Marple deduces the crime like a paleontologist working out the complete body and lifestyle of a dinosaur based on a few teeth and some toe-bones. The Joan Hickson version cheated on the ending to add drama and made Lance Fortescue into an entirely different character as a result. Here, despite the lack of drama (Miss Marple reads a letter) you get a subtle reward, true to the text.

The murderer will not just get arrested. He’ll suffer mentally and emotionally right up until the crown hangs him, as he realizes that he’s not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. No escape for him, thanks to a convenient lorry driver.

I’m unsure about the three gratuitous sex scenes. Agatha wrote very passionate novels but she kept the bedroom shenanigans offstage. She’s an adult, she wrote for adults, and adults all know what they do behind closed doors. We don’t need instruction manuals. Nonetheless — perhaps because they didn’t rev up the drama for the climax — ITV gives us not just a scene showing Adele Fortescue and her golf pro in adulterous action in a broom closet. We get two such scenes with Lance and Pat Fortescue.

I can grasp Adele’s scene. It’s easy shorthand to make sure the audience knows she’s cheating on her much older husband and with whom. It’s sordid, too. A broom closet? When he’s working at a nice hotel? Tacky, tacky, tacky, but a manicurist from Brighton might not expect better. Adele holds the upper hand in the relationship but she’s too dumb to realize it. She also isn’t smart enough to demand better accommodations.

But Lance and Pat? Was this to demonstrate they adore each other? To show that even though they have a luxurious bed handy, they use the back of the hallway door because they’re free-spirited? I dunno. My back hurt watching that scene, along with thinking the actors cheated because Pat’s skirt was clearly in the way, as were Lance’s pants. Miss Dove, the housekeeper, certainly had her ears burn as well as have her opinion of Lance and Pat decline sharply.

I appreciated the scenes showing why Percival Fortescue was fighting with his father. They made it clear that dear old dad was losing his mind. The business was suffering, bankruptcy loomed, and Percival knew he’d have to pick up the pieces. Dad marrying a sexpot manicurist from Brighton was the least of his worries. Lance’s untimely return and demands were a much bigger problem.

Overall, the casting was excellent other than Elaine Fortescue and worse, Gladys, the housemaid. The film industry does this all the time. They show us an actress whom all the characters claim is plain, even ugly, and we, the audience, ask “on what planet?” The Planet of the Beauty Queens, I suppose.

Elaine is supposed to be plain enough that only her money will generate a boyfriend. In this case, it’s Gerald Wright, school teacher and Communist. You know he’s only marrying Elaine for her money but she seems happy enough. But Elaine Fortescue is not plain. She can do far better than Gerald Wright, C0mmunist, and no amount of Hollywood foolishness will make me say otherwise. Miss Marple would agree.

Gladys was much worse cast and, in this case, the Joan Hickson version did better. This actress was not plain. She wasn’t a raving beauty queen, but most of us aren’t. She was pretty in a normal way. Joan Hickson’s Gladys Martin, by comparison, was dumpy, lumpy, frumpy, and the sort of girl who’s so desperate to be noticed by a boy that she’ll do or say anything he wants to keep him happy and around. ITV Productions did do a better job of showing us the relationship between Miss Marple and Gladys and did far better at demonstrating how credulous and gullible poor Gladys was.

Poor Gladys Martin. Destined to be used by the people around her because she’s not smart enough to understand what’s happening to her. Neither does she have Adele’s beauty to cushion her life. As an orphan, she’s got no family to protect her. Only Miss Marple.

Jennifer Fortescue’s character arc was very interesting to watch. Percival Fortescue married her after she nursed him through pneumonia. She’s ambivalent and you wonder why she married him. Her nefarious purpose is revealed, but what happens next? The huge secret she’s hiding has come between them since the day they met. Will they remain married? Get divorced? Jennifer is unhappy, lonely, and bored. She won’t be in the future. Her destiny is left ambiguous as is Percival’s. I spent some time speculating what they would do, because it’s clear that he still cares about her, even if he’s clumsy in how he expresses himself.

I would have liked to see more of Vivian Dubois. We never find out what happens to him — even a paragraph — in the novel. Similarly, he gets short shrift in both film versions. He discovers what he thought was a great payout is a few pieces of jewelry. Agatha does sometimes give us an ending for a minor character like this: see Raymond Starr in The Body in the Library as an example. He loses his bid to escape the hospitality industry via an advantageous marriage but we’re still given a snapshot of his future. With Vivian, we get nothing. ITV could also have changed his name and I wouldn’t carp. Vivian is no longer a man’s name anywhere in the world.

This film worked so much better than earlier BBC production with Joan Hickson. It was true to the text while still being well-paced, well-acted, and fun to watch. Great English country house porn too.

Wow. What a house. It needed a lot more maids than Gladys to keep it spic and span. Stick with this version. You won’t be disappointed.

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