Teresa Reviews Murder at the Vicarage (2016)

Teresa Reviews Murder at the Vicarage (2016) (aka The Protheroe Affair / L’Affaire Protheroe) from Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie, and wishes it had spent more time on the story and less on the stars.

Fidelity to text: 1½ guns

Two adulterers separately confess to killing her husband who has a daughter by another woman he claimed was dead. That’s it.

Quality of movie: 2 guns

Every time the episode got going — and it has its moments! — it collapsed back into the inanity the Protheroe ad agency specializes in.

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

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

Wipe your mind of The Murder at the Vicarage (1930). This episode of Les Petits falls into the one-sentence summation version of Agatha’s novels. If you’re very familiar with the novel, you might recognize the center theme. If you’re not, and it’s not pointed out to you, you’d never know this episode is based on one of Agatha’s most famous novels. It’s Miss Marple’s first novel appearance, followed over the years by eleven more novels and numerous short stories.

There are no old ladies here, sleuth division or otherwise. Nor are there vicars, their much younger wives, a vicarage, disguised thieves after the silver, unruly servants, poachers, or a village full of gossips. All gone, swept away by the tide of history. There is plenty of adultery and abusive men. Interestingly, Protheroe’s daughter Lise (Lettice Protheroe) shows every sign of being a chip off the old block. She’ll be just as toxic a boss as her father was and will undoubtably sexually harass her employees because hey, they work for her and know their place.

We quickly learn about Protheroe’s very stylish advertising agency, owned by Alexandre Protheroe (Col. Lucius Protheroe). He’s even more toxic than Laurence who — whatever else you can say about his mismanagement — doesn’t demand sexual favors from Marlène. Of coworkers and suspects? Why yes, as you’ll see, but that’s par for the course for him.

Alexandre’s wife Anne (Anne Protheroe) is one of his idea people for the advertising agency. She turns out to be his former secretary. She’s also the unwanted stepmother to Alexandre’s daughter from a previous relationship. Unlike her novel counterpart, Lise adores daddy dearest. She wants desperately to become an actress, something daddy dearest is discouraging. This version of Anne doesn’t go out of her way to antagonize Lise, not that it does her any good.

But she’s still stupid because despite knowing her husband is an abusive monster who will murder her if he finds out, she’s conducting a torrid affair with his TV cameraman, Tristan (Lawrence Redding). She knows Alexandre suspects. Heck, Hélène (Alexandre’s current secretary) suspects as does Damien (Alexandre’s chauffer) who is also Hélène’s fiancé.

Damien and Hélène have no novel counterparts. Their relationship doesn’t look any happier than Alexandre and Anne’s.

Lise doesn’t suspect, but she’d readily believe that Anne would cheat. She’s also got a crush on Tristan.

Soon, the body of Hélène is found hanging in the entryway stairwell. Alexandre insists on opening the agency for the day anyway because she’s a mere secretary and important new clients are coming. Hélène’s body gets moved to an office couch contaminating the crime scene. You’ll wonder who moved Hélène’s now stiff body from her makeshift noose, out of the stairwell, and up to the office. You’ll also wonder which horrified, browbeaten staffer called the police.

Alexandre mistakes Commissaire Laurence for a cleaning agency executive, not a surprise because Laurence doesn’t show up with any policemen in tow. When Alexandre learns the truth, he’s angry over his business being interfered with. He doesn’t care about what Laurence knows: women generally don’t commit suicide by hanging themselves and how did she get up to that inaccessible spot by herself anyway?

Soon afterwards, Damien shows up at Avril’s place. He’d been violently arguing with Hélène in the street the night before her death. A passerby got involved, the fight ensued, the passerby reported the scuffle, and now Damien is the number one suspect. Why is he at Avril’s? Because he and Avril grew up in the orphanage and swore bonds of loyalty to each other. But he wasn’t loyal enough to keep in touch, despite Avril remaining in Lille and even getting her byline in the local newspaper, making her easy to find.

But now that he needs her? He’s there, demanding and pushy. Very pushy. You, dear viewer, can easily spot what Avril cannot. Damien will be trouble and if things go wrong or she develops a conscience or dedication to the truth, he’ll blame everything on her. He’ll never be at fault. Nor, weirdly, does he spend even a single moment grieving about Hélène. They were going to be married in two weeks! Yes, she just dumped him, but then she died tragically a few hours later.

You’d think the script would permit Damien to say something. But no, every time someone should be showing genuine emotion over the trap they’re in, the script shifts its tone back to Keystone Kops, French division. The music shifts in an equally inappropriate manner to the point that if it’s bright and bouncy, you know someone’s about to die horribly.

While Laurence is trying to learn what happened to Hélène, Avril finagles her way into Alexandre’s office as his new secretary. She quickly learns what Damien didn’t bother telling her: her new boss is a toxic, handsy, abusive, and a would-be rapist. Hélène may not have given Damien the details, but as an employee and Alexandre’s driver, he wouldn’t have been ignorant of his boss’ behavior with female subordinates.

When Laurence summons Alexandre to his office for an interrogation, Alexandre spots Marlène. He’s smitten and, based on her being even more incompetent than usual, suspects what anyone would. Marlène is kept on for reasons other than her secretarial abilities. He talks her into filming a commercial and she, made extra stupid by the script, falls for his smooth patter.

Meanwhile, Déborah Davis, movie star, shows up in Lille to meet Alexandre. Later, she tells Laurence that it was for a possible cologne commercial. This is when he demonstrates French police interrogation procedures by seducing a person of interest to learn more.

Laurence learns is that every single person connected with the investigation lies. We’ll assume legitimate policework went on behind the scenes because how else did Laurence discover Julie Boyer, Alexandre’s former secretary? Or Martin, a clever kid with a firecracker habit? Yet, Laurence doesn’t investigate Déborah Davis’ background, despite her becoming more and more important to the case.

Avril does that background investigation, proving she can emulate Nancy Drew, at least when the script needs her to develop a brain. Sadly, she never understands the bullet she dodged when she refuses to marry Damien. He’s abusive when she says no but she still doesn’t buy a clue, wailing over her lost friend. He wasn’t a friend, Avril. He ignored you until he needed you and when you didn’t produce the way he wanted, he got abusive.

Damien, in other words, is just like his boss, Alexandre, only younger and better looking.

I suppose you could say the episode ends happily. Avril learns who her real friends are. Lise inherits the agency (at about age 16) and learns the mother she thought was dead is alive. She’s also proven right in her estimation of her stepmother. Lise may also wake up one day and realize she caused the deaths of two people by herself. She saw her father murder Hélène, but did she report it? She did not, and so stepmother Anne and cameraman Tristan murdered her father in turn and will face the guillotine.

But if Lise had told the truth to Laurence, like Avril finally did about Damien, Anne and Tristan would have had a happy ending of their own. Daddy dearest would still be dead, executed by the state for Hélène’s murder, but you can’t have everything.