Teresa Reviews Sparkling Champagne (2015)

Teresa reviews Sparkling Cyanide (2015), a.k.a. Meurtre au Champagne from the second season of Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie, and enjoyed it when the stars were offstage.

(c)2023 by Teresa Peschel

Source: Amazon DVD set

Fidelity to text: 3½ poisoned cocktails

Considering how much was rewritten, the plot’s surprisingly close to Agatha’s version.

Quality of movie: 3½ poisoned cocktails

Much, much better than I expected. Reasonably tight and coherent. It shone when the stars were offstage and lost its fizz when they reappeared.

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

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

I never planned on watching season two of Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie other than the opening episode and the next to the last one. Season one was interesting and reasonably close to the text. It’s worth watching. The two episodes of Season Two I saw (They Do It with Mirrors and Towards Zero) were awful. Think of I Love Lucy, the Keystone Kops, and French bedroom farces tossed together and performed at the provincial dinner theater level.

But here we are, back again. In order to have a comprehensive guide to international Agatha Christie film adaptations, I must sit through all the international adaptations we can find. That means 25 more episodes of Les Petits Meurtres, season two, to endure. It’s 27 episodes in all, 25 of which claim to adapt Agatha’s stories. They admit upfront that two episodes never flowed from her pen. Having sat through their versions of Mirror and Zero, I was ready to bet most of their episodes never went near an Agatha story besides similarity in name and boiling the plot down to a single sentence.

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised by Meurtre au Champagne. It follows the text of Sparkling Cyanide! Quelle surprise. It wasn’t a surprise when Commissaire Laurence, girl reporter Alice Avril, and incompetent secretary Marlène Leroy were insufferable and grating. The film improved whenever they were offscreen. Sadly, this is their show so they kept returning. And returning. Like a quiche gone bad. You innocently sit down to eat it and it comes back, revisiting you at both ends and wearing out whatever welcome it had.

Commissaire Laurence was insufferably rude and arrogant, reveling in his power to humiliate. Poirot — who is equally intelligent — would have never treated subordinates and suspects as mud beneath his patent leather shoes. But Commissaire Laurence does. He particularly has it in for any woman (that would be Alice Avril) who doesn’t meet his standards of being gorgeous, impeccably groomed, ready to fall into his bed, and suitably subservient to his wonderfulness. If he’s trying to get Avril to clean up her act and enter the adult world, he’s clearly not as smart as he thinks he is because his methods aren’t working.

Avril, like in the opening episode, is the embodiment of why women weren’t wanted in the work world for anything besides scrubbing floors and making tea. But she’d probably do them badly too. Watching her play at newspaper reporting will make you long for Rosalind Russell or Katherine Hepburn. They played intelligent women who outcompeted the men because of their skill and drive. Not Avril. It’s a surprise when she does something right.

And Marlène? She’s the decorative secretary who can barely type, can’t take dictation, doesn’t know stenography, and can’t efficiently run an office. Having seen hundreds — nay, thousands! — of old movies, it’s clear she’s the boss’ secretary because she provides more personal services than filing. Marlène breaks out of this mold for one reason only, and it’s not her choice. Commissaire Laurence who never turns down any attractive woman chooses (for unknown reasons) not to chase Marlène around the desk. She would be willing, as evidenced by her heartfelt letter to the local newspaper’s agony column, the one answered anonymously by Avril.

Laurence isn’t incompetent, except at personnel management where he’s toxic.

If you can ignore them and focus on mystery they’re investigating, you’ll be rewarded. Sparkling Cyanide is riddled with adulterous couples, shrinking violet sisters, scoundrel cousins, a mysterious hunk with a past, and it takes place on a movie set. Yep, Rosemary Barton becomes Elvire Morenkova, glamorous movies star with a hidden past who marries the rich shlub, Georges (George Baron) who finances her films.

Like every other Rosemary, this one is needy, high-maintenance, and lives for her sex life. She had an affair with Jules, the hunk with a past (Anthony Browne) who dropped her when he met her shy little sister, Violette (Iris). She’s currently chasing her director, Daniel (Stephen Farraday) who’s coming to realize, like Jules, that he really should back away quickly and return to his long-suffering wife, Claude (Amanda Farraday).

Elvire’s husband Georges is besotted with her, despite her multiple infidelities. He married her, knowing she’d stray whenever she felt like it. That’s a change from the novel; that George never knew how Rosemary cheated on him.

And of course, there’s Georges’ efficient, loyal, secretly-in-love with her boss secretary, Babette (Ruth Lessing). She’s also the production assistant on the film set, leading to a moment of confusion for me when Babette introduced herself to Avril as Elizabeth Jacquel and was henceforth referred to by everyone as Babette.

There’s also Victor Lebrun (Victor Drake), Elvire and Violette’s cousin. He’s smooth, smarmy, and introduced early on as someone to avoid when he tries to blackmail an attractive local society matron. Commissaire Laurence uses police brutality to get Victor to back off, following up by seducing the matron.

Victor’s mother disappears because she’s not needed. Instead, because the action takes place on a film set, you’ll enjoy Pierre, an aggressively pushy actor who comes on way too strong for Avril’s taste.

Elvire suffers from a traumatic breakup with Daniel and writes the tragic “I can’t go on without you” note that Violette finds after her death by cyanide in the restaurant. Was it suicide? Laurence doubts it but he can’t find any evidence to say otherwise, despite using dubious police tactics.

In a completely unbelievable scene, Avril — who’s never acted a day in her life — gets tapped to take Elvire’s role in the film. They need someone right now. She’s sensibly reluctant until Laurence scoffs at her ability to act. As you’d expect, a grade school level dare gets her on the movie set where she snoops around like a grade school Nancy Drew. Among other things, she notices that Babette and Victor are not strangers.

Commissaire Laurence is forced to drop the case, but then the second murder happens. Georges re-enacted the tragic dinner party where Elvire died but this time, he drops dead of cyanide-laced champagne after making the toast. This one’s murder for sure so Laurence reopens Elvire’s case.

Everyone at the original dinner had a motive for Elvire’s death as Laurence points out. Daniel needed to get free of Elvire. Claude wanted her husband back. Violette inherited big. Jules removed a woman who threatened to reveal his secret past. Georges got rid of a cheating wife. Babette, the Hollywood-plain secretary, was tired of being bossed around by her boss’ wife.

But the second dinner party? It’s unclear who benefited from Georges’ death, so Laurence must do actual policework as well as listen to gossip from Marlène from gossip columns and Avril’s snooping.

He and Avril work out the true motive and rescue Violette in the nick of time from being gassed.

And it all works. If the other episodes of Season Two are written to this quality, I won’t have as onerous a task ahead of me.

We’ll find out!