I was pleasantly surprised to see that so many cinemas are still alive in southern Italy.
The not-so-pleasing September 2023 surprise, however, was that it appeared that almost all of them were screening the same film – a definitely-not Italian one, very loosely based on a reputedly underwhelming Agatha Christie novel.
Christie’s original is set in England, but Kenneth Branagh’s third Poirot outing gives it an “exotic”, Italian setting.
In the English-speaking world the film is called A Haunting in Venice.
English film critic Deborah Ross describes it as “leaden and wholly uninvolving”:
The first problem is that Hallowe’en Party, the Agatha Christie novel on which this is based, is set in an English village and goes nowhere. At the first mention of ‘Venice’ someone should have rugby tackled Branagh while shouting ‘STOP!’.
However, in southern Italy, the film proved unstoppable!
As you can see, its marketers wished to be very sure that Italian cinema-goers knew that the film was a murder “mystery”.
Photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken on 28 September 2023 in the Sicilian city of Modica – Italy’s artisan chocolate capital.
Click here to learn more about Modica.
Click this to read Deborah Ross’s full review.