Teresa Reviews Dumb Witness (2015)
Teresa reviews Dumb Witness (2015), a.k.a. Temoin Muet from Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie, Season Two and wished it had followed through on its supernatural premise.
(c)2023 by Teresa Peschel
Source: Amazon DVD set
Fidelity to text: 3 poison bottles
Surprisingly close, although the motive for murder changes as does the relationship between Bella and Jacob. Max, the dog, becomes a walk-on instead of his expected meaty part.
Quality of movie: 3 poison bottles
This could have been good but the last ten minutes killed it. Films shouldn’t raise major issues they then ignore.
Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.
Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.
Season Two of Les Petits Meurtres is shaping up to have a few character arcs among detective Swan Laurence, his Marilyn Monroe-lookalike secretary Marlene Leroy, and wannabe reporter Alice Avril. Commissaire Laurence endures his wacky mother and encourages Marlène to be a competent secretary. Marlène learns (badly) stenography. Alice reveals a complicated backstory which might explain why she’s emotionally trapped in junior high despite being at least 10 years older.
There’s always hope.
At the same time, each episode to date has almost nothing to do with each other. Case in point: Alice borrows a party dress and has her hair done, turning her from Hollywood drab to stunning, and Laurence is taken aback. Except he saw the same transformation in the previous episode! Amnesia on the part of the director, script, and showrunners is the only explanation.
As for this episode? It did well until the ending which completely undercut everything that came before. If the film had followed through on its promise, I could have forgiven some of the obvious plot holes and motivation issues, but no.
Meanwhile, Laurence gets a letter scented with cheap perfume. He, competent as always, notices what Marlène does not. The letter was postmarked two days ago but was written months ago. The writer, Emilie Longuet, (Emily Arundell) is afraid someone’s going to murder her but she doesn’t say who. Since then, she died under mysterious circumstances. Laurence, followed by our Nancy Drew wannabe, discovers a castle full of hateful relatives and the secretary who inherited everything. He also meets there his spiritualist mother, Alexina, with whom he has a fraught relationship.
Alexina combines from the novel Isabel and Julia Tripp. She’s loopy, funny, steals every scene she appears in, and completely fails at the end when she zooms off on a scooter with Avril instead of telling Laurence that all the spooky doings are proof that the world is stranger than we know.
Alexina is also considering a relationship with the secretary who inherited big but claims to have never known that Emilie rewrote her will to favor her. Geneviève Ranson is far more competent than Wilhelmina Lawson, her counterpart in the novel. She’s so competent that it’s hard to believe she would cheerfully work for when, years before the war, Emilie crushed her husband under the wheels of her limo. It was an accident and she forgives her and there’s no hard feelings. I couldn’t buy it, but this piece of ridiculousness could have been used to set up a much better ending addressing the spiritual elephant in the room.
Emilie’s family is as toxic as she was. Bella is married to Georges (Jacob Tanios) and they have a daughter, Sophia. Their relationship is strange and makes you wonder who’s controlling who. Bella’s cousins are Charlotte (Theresa Arundell) and Louis (Charles Arundell). They’re brother and sister with an equally weird relationship. As Laurence investigates — ineptly aided by Avril who’s never read a single mystery novel and so knows nothing about criminal investigation or cares for justice for the victim — he learns exactly how toxic everyone is. They all hated Emilie, were trapped in the castle (no reason was given why), and were equally despised by her.
Max, the dog, is the only decent person in the household other than Daisy and the invisible servants. Unfortunately, his role was shrunk into a walk-on.
Various flavors of spiritualism play major roles in the story. Alexina has blackouts where “someone” speaks to her. She’s sure the dead walk among us and conducts séances to contact Emilie. Avril has prophetic visions and dreams. She hears unearthly singing. Following a vision, she looks for Emilie’s diary. A poltergeist destroys the library around her, helping her to find it in time for the commercial break. Bella, Georges, and Commissaire Laurence all see Sophia, but only Bella and Georges know the truth, that Sophia is a ghost. Laurence doesn’t — despite reading the files on the Longuet family! — and is nonplussed when he visits the cemetery and sees her grave.
As in the novel, Bella murdered her aunt Emilie. But she did it for revenge, not greed. Aunt Emilie was one of three sisters. Bella’s mom ended up in the asylum (because of Emilie? You won’t learn). Charlotte and Louis’ mom drowned herself in a pond because Emilie told her what her kids had been getting up to in the attic in private. Did they stop this behavior? Doesn’t look like it. Any fathers are long gone.
Emilie, being a vicious control freak, tortured Bella and Georges’ daughter and they did nothing. They stayed in the castle after their daughter leapt from an attic window. Georges even covered up Bella’s murders.
This plot makes sense. What doesn’t is all the ghostly mumbo-jumbo: the poltergeist in the library; Avril’s visions and hearing the singing; Laurence seeing Sophia standing at the open attic window preparing to leap and then finding no one there.
Worse Alexina, who claims to be an expert, ignores what shouldn’t be ignored: the poltergeist. Who tossed the library while Avril huddled in it, magically missing hitting her in the head with a bookcase and revealing a vital clue? When Laurence solves the murder, does she tell him that Emilie was behind it all? Or, much less likely, Sophia? Laurence would scoff but she — the true believer! — should have said something instead of zooming off with Avril into the sunset. She could have given a plausible reason of what we witnessed that had no other explanation. But no. She doesn’t take seriously all that ectoplasm, tappings, voices, and thrown around books, so why should we?
What’s more annoying is the spiritual trappings could have been explained (other than the visions) in a way that would have fit the script even if it changed the murderer.
Picture this: Geneviève murdered Emilie for revenge and faked everything — the voices, the rappings and tappings, the apparitions, and the tossed library — to frame Bella and Georges. She had just as much reason to hate Emilie as they did and, unlike them, it’s frequently stated how capable and competent she is. She also disliked and mistrusted Charlotte and Louis. Destroying Emilie’s family, like Emilie had destroyed her own, was a fine revenge. She wins it all: the textile factory, the money, the estate, and has her long-wished-for revenge.
This ending would work and it would follow Agatha’s own pattern in handling the supernatural and murder: Paranormal activities cover up the mundane reality of curdled hate and greed.
