Teresa Reviews L’Heure Zéro (2019)

Teresa reviews L’Heure Zéro (2019), adapted from “They Do It With Mirrors,” and discovers that familiarity breeds contempt.

(A rewatched and revised review for the “International Agatha Christie, She Watched” project)

(c)2023 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: ½ poison bottles and knives
Boil down the plot to “A man frames his hated ex-wife for murder,” add a bloody glove, and you’ve got all the fidelity you’re going to get.

Quality of film: 2 poison bottles and knives
So many missed opportunities and plot holes big enough to sink battleships.

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

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

Sigh. Sigh deeper. Sigh until all the air leaves my lungs and fills my living room for regrets over lost opportunities, chances not taken, plot twists set up and ignored, back story promises left unfulfilled. As with so many Les Petits Meurtres season two episodes, this could have been good if only the script had been rewritten instead of the production company filming the rushed, rough first draft.

We saw L’Heure Zéro for the first time over a year ago for Agatha Christie, She Watched. It was one of two episodes of Season Two we endured and I’ve concluded that — by accident — we saw the two worst episodes. The other one was the opening episode Jeux de Glaces (2013), a hacked and slashed version of They Do It with Mirrors. It encompassed all the failures of Season Two in a single, 90-minute film. Rewatching Jeux de Glaces for International AC,SW did not improve it.

L’Heure Zéro was likewise not improved. It got worse! It, too, flaunts all the defects Les Petits Meurtres is prone to. Terrible police work including not notifying the family of the first victim? Check. No sense of time? Check. Death threats and stalkers appearing, then vanishing as if they’d never showed up? Check. Characters being so cardboard that having your wife murdered doesn’t faze you and no one notices you’re indifferent (Maxime aka Neville Strange)? Check. Or being so cardboard that learning your true love was murdered days before the wedding and you don’t shed a tear (Audrey Fontaine aka Audrey Strange)? Check. Avril being as non-professional as possible? Check. Laurence being even more toxic and less professional to the point you wonder why this patriarchal outpost of policing in the provinces hasn’t been sued yet? Check.

And Marlène! Marlène’s been a police secretary for years. So what does she do when she discovers the celebrity chef who’s been living in Lille for years without her ever noticing is also the man who dumped her at the altar and he’s currently accused of murder? She falsifies evidence to make sure he’s convicted! She seduces Dr. Glissant, the pathologist, to gain access to the lab report, drugs him, and alters the report to ensure Maxime is found guilty. Then, when Laurence points out that Maxime will get the guillotine, she’s surprised. She’s a police secretary! She had to have learned something on the job.

What’s worse is this was a rare chance to explain why Marlène — lovely, sweet-natured, generous to all and sundry — has been mysteriously unable to find a man she’d marry and have the family she’s always dreamed of. The sole reason Marlène goes home alone to a houseplant is because the script insists she’s somehow undesirable and therefore unwanted. As if.

Learning that Maxime dumped her at the altar 15 years ago was a golden opportunity for the showrunners to have Marlène say “You, Maxime, are the reason I never married! You, Maxime, are why I can’t trust anyone. You, Maxime, are why I go home alone to my tiny flat with only a houseplant for company. You, Maxime, are why I don’t have the children I’ve longed for. The children I’ve already named!” Do you get this scene? Explaining Marlène’s magical aura of “I’m unattractive and unwanted?” You do not.

Instead, you see Marlène so angry over Maxime dumping her 15 years ago and remarrying twice that she uses Dr. Glissant to falsify evidence without ever providing an explanation other than “you dumped me.”

And this was only the beginning of forced stupidity on the part of our tres bon amis.

We open with a body which, amazingly, wasn’t discovered by Avril. A locally famous TV newsreader on the local station is discovered drowned in the lake. He had apparently been out fishing and suffered a tragic accident. NordTV at Lille must have a tiny staff because he’s replaced by Audrey Fontaine, making news for becoming the first female newscaster in France. No one at NordTV bothered notifying Foucher’s family. Neither, criminally, did the police. This is why, five weeks later, Etienne Foucher stomps into Laurence’s office and insists that his father’s death wasn’t an accident.

Do you get a line of dialog saying Etienne and the rest of the Foucher family had been trapped behind enemy lines in Algeria while dad stayed home in France to work? You do not. You get zero explanation for why Laurence didn’t notify the family and do the most basic, easiest policework. Yet Laurence managed to find the doctor who’d treated Maxime for severe depression 10 years previously!

Laurence shows his professionalism even more when he seduces (again!) the lead suspect, Audrey. Anything he’d learn would be inadmissible in court. It’s on par with Marlène falsifying evidence. Then, when Audrey dumps him after their one-night-stand, he pouts.

Audrey’s story could have been interesting but again, nothing. The death threats against her and the station producer? No one bothers to inform the police. Then, when the stalker shows up, she manages to defeat him in a stairwell — while wearing high heels and a sheath dress with a matching coat — without mussing her hair. That’s a lot of Aqua Net. The script could have done something with stalkers, but no.

Claire Beaumont (Kay Strange) gets even less. She’s Maxime’s much younger, ambitious second wife. She wants Audrey’s job even though she’s unable to stop grinning at the camera when she’s reporting on the tragic death of a bunch of kids. Is Claire having an affair with Ted Gautier, station manager? Maybe? But you get a single scene of them together, followed by Claire telling Laurence it’s Ted’s imagination. You don’t get Ted’s reaction, nor do you learn what the rest of the station staff think.

Instead of plot, you get Avril showing up at the TV station to talk to Audrey, France’s first woman newscaster. Yet Avril is so incompetent a reporter that she doesn’t announce she’s there to interview Audrey! Even though she’d apparently done so for La Voix du Nord the previous week! I know she quit the job in a huff, but I can’t believe she wouldn’t claim a connection when she claims so many, many things to get what she wants. Then, to ensure your opinion of Avril is as low as she’ll go, she pants after Maxime. This, despite knowing he’s married to wife number 2, wife number 1 is working at the station, and Maxime is the one who dumped Marlène and destroyed her life. You get a few mealy words of apology and it’s back to seduction.

Aargh.

At least they got the clothes right. Audrey, the focused professional newscaster, wore Dior dresses and suits. Claire, her weather-girl rival, wore knock-offs of Yves Saint Laurent Mondrian trapeze dresses. Marlène, the police inspector’s secretary, wore good-quality department-store dresses. Avril, the up-and-coming girl journalist, wore student clothes because she hasn’t yet figured out that people treat you by how you appear.

But that’s all they got right.