Teresa reviews Christmas Crime (2017)

Teresa reviews Christmas Crime (2017) (Le Crime de Noël) from Les Petits meurtres d’Agatha Christie.

(Le Crime de Noël)

(c)2023 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 0 handguns

This film was made up from whole cloth, supposedly in the spirit of Agatha. Agatha would have done a much better job.

Quality of film: 2 handguns

I was hoping for better since the production company didn’t have to shoehorn our trio into someone else’s story replacing actual plot. Alas, that’s what we got.

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

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Le Crime de Noël is one of two films in the second season of Les Petits meurtres where they abandoned Agatha’s prose in favor of their own hacks. It should have worked. Without needing to squeeze their stars into someone else’s narrative, the screenwriter could have showcased their relationships, played to their strengths, worked within the characters we’ve come to know, and included a fully-fleshed out murder plot. The sky was the limit!

The plot had great potential. It’s set at a grim, Dickensian orphanage in Lille with spunky orphans. An evil matriarch (Mme. Hautin) with brassy curls and far too much makeup runs the joint. She’s got a shady past and a hulking henchman (Max) who terrorizes the kids. A young dweeby guy (Gaston) helps out but he’s no match for the matriarch and the henchman. There’s also a pretty but equally downtrodden washerwoman / servant (Sylvie), and you wonder: Could she work with our dweeby hero and save the orphans?

Because the plot takes place a few days before Christmas, there’s snow and singing and a friendly Father Christmas (Hubert Dopagne) who spreads cheer everywhere he goes.

One of our orphans (Rudy) channels the Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist. He’s sly, resourceful, and a good pickpocket. The other two important orphans, out of a gaggle of cute kids, are Louison and Baptiste Sauvage. They were abandoned at St. Cecile’s years ago by their mother but they’re old enough to flee the hated orphanage to find her and be a family again.

Is this Annie? No such luck, despite the presence of plenty of bad singing, mostly from Marlène.

Instead, it’s a murder mystery with three deaths. What’s irritating is the mystery had a good set up that was ignored in favor of Marlène’s singing and Laurence and Avril sniping at each other.

Worse, the mystery isn’t tied into the orphans’ plot. Instead, it involves Father Christmas, the father of a local restaurateur, Geoffroy Dopagne. Geoffroy’s married to Mireille who used to be one of the waitresses. The staff dislike her in her new I’m-better-than-you role. Geoffroy’s got problems with dad. Hubert used to be a sadistic tyrant, the kind of man who his family and staff pray would die suddenly and free them from his abuse. Then he transforms (a benevolent brain tumor?) into a kindly, twinkling old man who spreads money and happiness wherever he goes. Money taken from the restaurant till, depleting Geoffrey’s inheritance and causing cash flow issues.

Dressed up as Father Christmas, Hubert encounters the escaping Louison and Baptiste and is gunned down in front of them by a mysterious assailant. Baptiste disappears and Louison runs for help, providentially ending up in the street about to be run over by Laurence, Marlène, and Avril, on their way home from Marlène’s Christmas concert.

Louison is a Hollywood orphan, meaning she’s spunky and defiant to the point of abrasiveness. No real, abused orphan would ever be this pushy. She insists that she witnessed Father Christmas gunned down and her brother vanished. Laurence doesn’t believe her wild story but he’s forced to when she leads them to Santa’s body.

What’s really unbelievable is that Louison doesn’t care about Baptiste being found. This is her brother who protected her at the orphanage. The one she fled with to find mom. Yet she exhibits no fear nor grief. She doesn’t demand that they find her brother. We don’t see a scene where she’s unobserved, giving herself a pep talk about keeping up her spirits because she knows she and Baptiste will be reunited.

Instead, we get an equally unbelievable set of scenes where no one in Lille can take in an abandoned orphan the day before Christmas. I never thought I’d see the reason for Children’s Social Services on display in an Agatha Christie film but here we are. I wouldn’t expect Laurence to volunteer himself but Marlène? In a heartbeat. Yet she refuses, because her flat is too small. She couldn’t share her bed for one night? Sleep in a chair? Provide room at the inn for an abandoned little girl? Marlène, who’s desperate to marry Laurence and have many kids?

I couldn’t buy it. The sole reason had to be to force Louison into Laurence’s apartment, to set up absurd confrontations to ensure that if Laurence ever marries, he’ll insist that there be no children in the marriage.

Meanwhile Avril investigates St. Cecile’s, which was the Dickensian orphanage she endured growing up. Which, if you’ve been paying attention at home, was St. Therese’s, where she learned to sew for Crimes Haute Couture. Except now it’s St. Cecile’s. Unbelievably and coincidentally, the new teacher, Mlle. Chevalier, has yet to arrive although her luggage did. Mme. Hautin assumes that Avril is Mlle. Chevalier, so she dresses in Mlle. Chevalier’s clothes which fit perfectly and takes over the teaching.

Although we finally meet Mlle. Chevalier, we never learn why she’s several days late when her luggage was on time.

While Avril is relearning her way around the orphanage and winning the orphan’s trust (but she doesn’t tell them she met her birth mother who was then murdered a few hours later in La Mystérieuse Affaire de Styles), she meets another orphan who looks just like her younger self. Her child doppelgänger is a ghost from the past, whom only Avril can see and talk to. Yet this new evidence that Avril has paranormal abilities (remember Témoin muet?) is ignored.

Also ignored are major plot elements, such as Gaston’s background, who Sylvie was blackmailing, Mme Hautin’s shady background, how Geoffroy knew Mireille was cheating on him, and how Gaston and Mireille met.

After far too many unnecessary scenes, we get our climax. It was Gaston all along. He murdered Hubert because Hubert was his father. Back when he was a vicious tyrant, Hubert had raped his mother. After she hanged herself in the restaurant, Gaston’s grandparents raised him in a hate-filled, abusive house (another point in favor of Social Services). But when did Sylvie blackmail Gaston, resulting in him strangling her? When did Gaston begin the affair with Mireille? It might have been after he learned his father’s identity, and he wanted to get a toehold into the restaurant but what we learn is told from Laurence’s point of view as he reconstructs the crime. Mireille’s death looked accidental on purpose.

Since this is a Christmas episode, it needs some sort of happy ending, so Laurence finds Louison and Baptiste’s long-lost mother. She’s a drunken tramp who abandoned her kids because … Her husband was dead and she couldn’t cope? She didn’t want to be responsible for a pair of clinging brats? You won’t learn. Louison and Baptiste race to her open arms and they’ll … live happily ever after? If mom dries out, gets a job, learns some parenting skills, and becomes more self-reliant?

As happy endings go, it’ll have to do. Santa’s still dead, Geoffroy lost his father and wife, and the rest of the orphans return to their dank lives at St. Cecile’s. Noël merdique, everyone.