Teresa Reviews They Were Ten (2020)

Teresa reviews They Were Ten (2020), the French “And Then There Were None” (Ils Étaient Dix) and found it well-acted, beautifully shot & with added nihilism.

Fidelity to text: 3½ weapons

Changed backstories, added police investigation, and more nihilistic (if that’s possible).

Quality of movie on its own: 4½ weapons

Beautifully shot, paced, and acted. As long as you don’t think too much about plausibility, it works.

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

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

Like the Japanese version of And Then There Were None (2017), the French version sticks to the novel. By that I mean there’s a police investigation and the ten unlucky guests have no idea who’s pulling their strings. The closest any of the Paradise Hotel guests get is Kelly realizing she’d been tricked and Victoria finding the villain’s lair by accident and getting knifed. Each guest slowly has his or her criminal past revealed.

But there are changes, significant changes. The changes are so large that I can’t use the novel’s names because virtually every character other than Nina (Vera Claythorne) no longer has a direct correlation to the novel. Nina remains Vera, child murderess. But, in keeping with the increased nihilism of the script, Nina is even more villainous than Vera was!

How is this possible? Nina doesn’t just actively encourage young Nathan to swim in the deep end. She watches him drown. And, Nathan’s not her single lover’s nephew. Killing Nathan doesn’t help Arnaud inherit wealth and title. Killing Nathan hurts Arnaud and his wife, Barbara. Why did Nina drown Nathan? Barbara thoughtfully informed Nina that a) she’s one in a string of bimbo coeds; b) Arnaud lied to them all and she’s no different; c) Barbara’s paying the bills including for Nina’s “services”; d) Arnaud likes the rich lifestyle so he’ll never leave; and e) Nina amuses Barbara with her naiveté. Killing Nathan was spite and revenge, pure and simple. Nina can’t dress it up any other way. She sure can’t claim she made Arnaud’s life better.

But let’s go back to the beginning. We meet Nina on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. She needs to get to the small, interisland airport to catch a flight. Her purse is snatched, so she meets Mathieu Le Goff and Léonie Baptista, the local law. They’re helpful. Nina makes her flight, despite not having her passport or wallet. But she does have her cellphone! Thus, when Le Goff and Baptista find Nina’s purse, they call her but she doesn’t answer.

This sets off Le Goff’s radar and, unbeknownst to the folks at the Paradise Hotel or the puppet master, he starts paying attention. Le Goff and Baptista discover that the pilot of the plane is poisoned and a critical page from his flight log is torn out. They get a phone call from the worried wife of one of the guests. The airfield is looking for their expensive helicopter.

Le Goff and Baptista’s investigations bookend the episodes, adding to the sense of urgency. Will they be in time to save anyone? If Agatha wrote cozies, then the answer would be yes, but she didn’t.

Seven people arrive by plane at the island where cook/manager Myriam and handyman Eddy are waiting. Vincent the celebrity guru arrives in a helicopter he pilots himself. The eight guests are all taken aback at the primitive facilities and that people they expected to meet for business reasons aren’t anywhere to be seen. The computer screen comes to life and intones the familiar accusations.

Except it doesn’t. The robotic voice is cryptic and gives no details about the guests’ murderous pasts. This allows the ten to avoid any need to deny nor confess to each other or to the audience. Several of the ten never confess at all, although their crime is shown in flashbacks. What you get instead are protests of innocence.

With each person having a guilty conscience, no one believes anyone else. It’s a varied bunch, too. Kelly is the dumb bimbo with the cute dog. She’s convinced they’re on bizarre reality TV show. When her dog dies from poisoned water, she heads straight to crazy town.

Victoria, the surgeon, is actively unpleasant and openly paranoid. She’s not a good correlation to Dr. Armstrong. She does kill a patient while operating but because of hubris, not drunkenness. She also doesn’t cooperate with the puppet master to find the true villain. She’s too mistrustful of everyone but the guru for that.

The puppet master is Eve Lombardi, former policewoman. She’s far more nihilistic than Justice Wargrave was. He killed his victims in order by how culpable they were. He saved the guiltiest for last. Eve just wants to kill them and she’s not fussy about order or method. She’s not patterning her murders on a nursery rhyme, although she does set up the scary altar with voodoo statuettes, removing them one by one as people die. Everyone on the island could have died quickly from drinking the poisoned water and she’d have been fine with that. Same with the deadfall that missed and the poisonous viper leaping out of a trap that also missed.

Degree of guilt doesn’t matter to her. Which is why she also murders the pilot to conceal what’s going on without a qualm. Two of her victims could even be construed as being poorly chosen. That would be Eddy and Gilles. Eddy drove a truckload of illegal immigrants across France during a heatwave. They all died.

Yet the flashbacks show that he stopped several times — despite being ordered not to — to provide water and relief from the heat. He didn’t deliberately kill them. Gilles murdered a bully, shoving him over a bridge in front of a train. They were both about twelve. Kids do amazingly stupid, impulsive things and it was wrong. But it appears he remade his life.

Eve doesn’t care. She’s an Old Testament god where degree of guilt or extenuating circumstances don’t matter in the least. Why does she do this? Because her husband died of a heart attack on what looks like the courthouse steps in central Paris in broad daylight and, because he looked like a bum (his choice), no one rescued him. Or called an ambulance. Or called security so they could do call the ambulance.

I know France is a secular country where we’re all just meat puppets, but I found that hard to believe. I also can’t believe that’s a good enough reason to execute 11 people: the nine on the island, her henchman Jimmy, and the pilot. And the dog. She’s no better than anyone else on that island. She hurt so she wanted to hurt other people.

At the same time, she was very careful in her victim selection. Other than Vincent the guru and Gilles, no friend or family member came looking. No one. Vincent’s wife called Guadeloupe police. So did Gilles’ boss. That’s it. Eve targeted people who wouldn’t be looked for.

I’ll agree that they were all (except for Eddy and Gilles for whom cases could be made) guilty as sin. But so was she. I never thought I’d say Justice Wargrave was of sound mind, but he was compared to Eve. He was very careful in who he chose and how he killed them. Eve just wanted to watch people die.

Despite that, this is a great and fresh interpretation of a classic novel. Don’t miss it.