Teresa Reviews Fin de Siecle (2021) Hjerson

Teresa reviews Fin de Siecle (2021) and loved the influence of Scandinavian design on the theme of writing and murder.

(c)2024 by Teresa Peschel

Agatha Adjacent? 1½ freezers

Criminals who think they’re smarter than the detective and the detective overhears a chance remark clarifying the situation.

Quality of movie on its own? 4 freezers

A fun, plot-heavy episode where you get some time with each of the suspects.

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

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

One of the fun aspects of Hjerson is the sets. I’m seeing a part of the world I’ve rarely seen in film. Since this is a contemporary, I’m seeing cutting-edge Scandinavian design. This includes clothing (no one wears quite what you’d see in New York in the winter), city landscapes, and house interiors. In this case, the interior of Ronda Svensson’s home is more than the scriptwriter’s and the set designer’s dream of how successful writers live. It’s a clue.

Ronda is very successful, based on her huge, sunlit house, packed with an amazing array of antiques including a pair of life-sized porcelain tigers. Very few writers can afford to live like this, unless they’re top, top, top tier. Ronda’s home tells you she reached the pinnacle of mystery writing. This provides not just fame, literary awards, and magazine writeups, but truckloads of money to afford what mere mortals can only gape at online. You, dear reader, wouldn’t be admitted into the showrooms Ronda’s decorator uses lest you touch something with your grubby, deplorable paws and deface it.

An especially noteworthy piece that gives you a nod as to what kind of person Ronda really is, is her saucer chair or papasan. If you’ve never seen one, they’re round, with a framework supporting a cushion. A lot of them, made with circular rattan frameworks, came out of Asia. In Ronda’s case, she’s got a super plush, super luxurious papasan that appears to be constructed from clubbed baby seals. Minus the blood.

Yes, Ronda seats herself (and her guests!) on a chair made from the bodies of dozens of cute, plush baby seals. The baby seals are made of fake fur, but they’re carefully detailed with bright black eyes and cute little nosies, whiskers, and little flippers. It’s hard to imagine that adorable baby seals can be transformed into a creepy piece of furniture but there you are.

Bill and I paused the DVD to gawk. After the film was over, we googled baby seal armchair to see if it was real and discovered you can buy one if you’ve got a spare $15,000.

This is what Ronda sits in. Ronda, who’s at the top of her career with no mountains left to conquer. She’s rich. She’s a bestselling author. She’s got her books in every library, public and private. Her I-Love-Me award wall is packed full. Her loyal fans wait for each book with baited breath. She’s got a brow-beaten assistant/slave. She’s got a handsome young lover to replace her boring husband. She’s got rival writers. She’s even got a stalker of her very own.

What can Ronda do next to top herself? To prove to herself that she’s still got it? Ronda, who sits on a pile of baby seals, luxuriating in their plush softness and warmth. I know they’re fake baby seals. Ronda, Ronda’s decorator, and the chair manufacturer know they’re fake baby seals. But that is still one damned creepy chair. The cuteness and fluffy whiteness don’t scream “Throne of Sauron” but when you think about it, what else is Ronda’s chair but something that only a villain would use?

Dolores Umbrage would snap one up if it were made from cute stuffed kittens.

Ronda needs something fresh. Then, excitement enters her life. Her newest blockbuster — which she just finished typing and had been read by only five people — has suddenly become real. A famous chef was murdered by being lured into a freezer with an egg-timer and locked in. Just like Ronda’s new book! Except since the book hasn’t been published yet, none of her rabid fans could have used it as a blueprint for their own murder spree.

The police, naturally, are baffled. They’re investigating the chef and his relationships, but not finding anything. They don’t, according to Ronda, pay attention to her when she races down to inform them that the chef might have been killed by one of the five people who read her unpublished manuscript.

They ignore her, so Ronda, needing to see justice done and not have creepy stalkers use her prose for inspiration, confronts Sven and Klara at Boss Media. She asks for help with this bizarre murder what’s right out of her book. She’s upset as the murderer must be very close to her to know her plot.

Sven’s not interested as he prefers unsolved crimes of the past. Klara, however, sees a terrific TV episode. A famous chef dead, just like in a mystery novel? A famous and beautiful mystery writer who might be next? Wow. Give her more.

Over the course of the investigation, clues about Franco, Ronda’s publisher emerge: he’s nearing bankruptcy. He’s been embezzling from his clients. Ronda, his bestselling author who’s been keeping him in the black, wants to jump ship for a new publisher.

Franco turns up dead, eerily like Ronda’s manuscript. Franco was one of the five readers so he didn’t murder the chef.

Meanwhile, Klara who’s obviously conflicted about mixing marriage, motherhood, and high-powered TV jobs, leaves Niklas (they’d only been married about a year!), takes daughter Olivia, and moves in with Sven. Watching Klara’s domestic travails makes you wonder why she ever had a child in the first place (who is Olivia’s father?). It also seems like she married Niklas to gain a live-in housekeeper, nanny, and bedpartner. For his part, Sven swiftly learns that his new roomies get in the way of his own bedpartners, forcing him to keep his gay trysts at substandard hotels where he berates the overworked staff.

They keep interviewing the other readers. Matti, Ronda’s husband, tolerates her toy boy, but you never learn why. Erick, the chef, turns out to loathe the murdered chef. Erick’s a psycho, ready to use the crème brûlée torch to discipline an employee. Could he be the murderer? Wilma, the browbeaten assistant, isn’t just Ronda’s slave. She was an aspiring novelist until Ronda killed her chances with every publisher in Sweden. Ivana, Ronda’s main rival, knew Ronda had stolen her idea and turned it into the fatal manuscript. Ivana has a past with Ronda, revealed in one of Ronda’s earliest novels.

And there’s Ronda’s illiterate stalker. Who is he? Klara and Sven use Olivia to force Wilma to contact the stalker and what do you know. He turns out to be Ronda’s toy boy, Filip. When they interview Filip’s mother, trying to find Filip, they learn that everything Ronda told them about her stalker was a lie.

What else did Ronda lie about? But do they have time to find out, when Ronda’s been kidnapped? The rescue ends tragically for Filip, once again paralleling Ronda’s novel.

Then, it happens. While visiting Boss Media, Sven overhears a chance remark from showrunners on MILF Hotel about audience expectations and how the show follows a script. Ronda’s novels follow a formula and there’s always a twist ending.

So where’s the twist?

Which brings us back to Ronda’s baby seal chair. If you’d paid attention to the set decoration, you already know the answer.