Teresa Reviews Cards on the Table (2015)

Teresa reviews Cards on the Table (2015) an episode from Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie and thought it was better than the Poirot episode.

(c)2023 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 3½ daggers

Considerably closer than the Poirot episode which you’d think would be the gold standard.

Quality of movie: 3½ daggers

I still can’t stand Laurence or Avril but the movie held together despite him never revealing how he knew who Jouve was.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

Remove all memories of the mediocre Poirot adaptation of Cards on the Table. This version reshuffled the deck but not nearly to the same extent. You won’t feel that two mis-matched decks got shuffled together with added ridiculous jokers and lesbian queens.

It’s still not great. But it’s better than the Poirot episode. It’s logical. It hangs together. It largely follows Agatha’s plot, particularly when you consider that Commissaire Laurence, girl reporter Avril, and dumb blonde secretary Marlène must substitute for Poirot, Ariadne Oliver, and Superintendent Battle. Yep, Marlène fills in for Superintendent Battle. She’s mainly present for comic relief and to make you wonder (again) why the Lille police force is so strapped for help that they hired her.

The fourth member of Shaïtana’s gang representing law and order is Monsieur Ferdinand Jouve. He’s supposedly a member of the French MI5 and takes Colonel Race’s role. Like Marlène, he mainly serves as comic relief and to prove to you, dear viewer, that Laurence is the smartest and most capable man in the entirety of Northern France. Not only can no one else do his job, there is no one else on the police department’s staff.

Laurence is instantly dismissive of Jouve and you wonder if they’d met before. He claims he knows all about Jouve’s posturing and posing and puffing himself up to be an important secret agent rather than a pencil pusher in the archives. But you are never shown a moment of proof onscreen. No flashbacks, no wartime remembrances, no conversations with other members of the French Secret Service, no reading of classified documents. Nothing. Laurence says it’s so and so it is.

M. Jouve runs about in the background doing his investigation, including breaking and entering. It’s acceptable when Laurence breaks and enters to collect evidence but he’s special. Jouve is not. He shows moments of ineptness, such as not closing a drawer properly. But nothing I saw onscreen said he was Inspector Clouseau or Agent Maxwell Smart. The proof of his cluelessness must be that he — unlike Colonel Race — gets knifed.

But M. Jouve gets the last laugh for his mistreatment. He accuses Laurence of being Shaïtana’s murderer because he discovered the body. Late that night, he’s knifed in Laurence’s bachelor pad, permanently staining Laurence’s nice rug. Commissaire Tricard is faced with a decision. Remove Laurence from the case so the audience can learn if there are other commissaires on the Lille police force? Or find another way?

He finds another way when Laurence coerces Avril into providing him with an alibi for the time of Jouve’s murder. Avril manages to humiliate Laurence while giving him a plausible alibi. And he has to swallow it, just like he’ll have to buy himself a new rug.

Avril remains herself, resenting her job as a lonely-hearts columnist. She’s rude and brash but proves (again!) that if someone can benefit her like Shaïtana says he can, she’ll toady with the best of them.

Marlène falls into new depths of dumbness. I’d like to think that this is an act and she’s really the smartest person in the Lille police department but I can’t believe it. There’s too much evidence that she’s a card-carrying idiot and not enough that she has working brain cells. This is made particularly clear when she manages to poison her goldfish Bubulle by feeding him slices of apple. I’m assuming that’s how the fish died because in the next scene, Bubulle is floating upside down.

To prove Laurence has a heart, he replaces the fish with another goldfish that doesn’t resemble Bubulle at all other than being a goldfish. And Marlène doesn’t notice. She adored that fish, staring at it every day and cooing to it, but the script demands that she fulfill every stereotype of dumb blondeness.

With our stars shoehorned in place and M. Jouve filling in for Colonel Race, the plot gets going. Shaïtana confronts Laurence in an antique shop about murderers he has known. Laurence dismisses him. When the four suspects arrive in his office for an unarranged interview (you’ll never see a scene explaining why any of them showed up), he’s forced to pay attention to that theatrical mountebank. Laurence arrests Shaïtana and then … lets him go for no reason I could see other than he had no grounds to arrest him in the first place.

But a free dinner is a free dinner so Laurence takes up Shaïtana’s offer and brings Marlène along because Shaïtana asked him to. Once at the dinner, he’s taken aback at the other guests. Avril, wearing jejune pink plaid taffeta, Jouve who gives off distinct vibes that they’d met before but the script falls down on the job to explain why, and the four murderers in Shaïtana’s collection.

They are Mme. Nevers (Mrs. Lorimor), a very sophisticated woman who reveals nothing she doesn’t want to reveal; Dr. Barillon (Dr. Roberts), a smooth talker and risk-taking bridge player; Coupet (Col. Despard) who looks very uncomfortable in those extravagant surroundings; and dewy, virginal Elise Schlumberger (Anne Meredith) wearing a frothy white extravaganza that Shaïtana gave her. He also adorns her with a diamond necklace, leaving the viewer to wonder what other interest he takes in her. The necklace becomes a plot point later, perfectly in keeping with Anne Meredith’s character. The matching bracelet emphasizes the point, but its theft takes place offscreen as related by Laurence.

Dr. Barillon gets the major change. He’s no longer carrying on affairs with his patients and murdering their unhappy spouses to protect himself. Instead, very plausibly, he murders his twin brother who stole his fiancée and secretary.

Coupet’s story remains much the same. He tried to save M. Louvier and Mme. Louvier (Mrs. Luxmore) interfered, causing him to kill her husband. Laurence’s interview with Mme. Louvier is perfectly in keeping with his approach to women and policework.

It’s also funny, although it’s hard to believe that Mme. Louvier would be so blatantly honest with a potential client for her matchmaking business.

Elise Schlumberger remains Anne Meredith. For her story to work, Avril takes on not only Ariadne Oliver’s role but also Rhoda Dawes’ part. After the fateful dinner, Elise has no place to go. Avril takes pity on her and invites her to stay with her. Elise tells her tale of woe and Avril listens. But Laurence (despite using her to interrogate suspects more plausibly than he can) doesn’t believe in sharing information. Avril learns a critical fact about Elise’s background and doesn’t pass it on. Avril, Coupet, and Elise form a similar love triangle to the novel. Coupet’s initially attracted to Elise’s fragility but comes to like Avril more. Elise is jealous and she’s killed before so she tries again.

Eventually, that leads to a ridiculous ending for Elise, run over in the street in the most implausible fashion ever. But it’s still better than the Poirot episode’s awful rewrite where she and Rhoda turn out to be having a torrid lesbian affair and Rhoda is the evil murderess and Anne’s merely a thief.