Personally I think this is Agatha Christie at her darkest. The story is about a pained and bleak as the first Lady of mystery ever got. The production, starring the great British actor David Suchet as the cool and calculated Belgian detective, really gets the dimness of this story of betrayal, cheating, murder and painting right. There is nothing of the playfulness in other Poirot stories and productions that Suchet has starred in; Five Little Pigs efficiently delivers a sucker punch in oh so subtle a fashion: one finds ones self hit before you ever see it coming. They have even gone out of their way (production staff) to produce a completely unique soundtrack for the film, completely abandoning the jazz like theme music at the beginning that identifies most other Poirot entries in this series. As far as art connections go, Rachel Stirling, who stars as the condemned "murderess" here actually has a degree in art history from the University of Edinburgh (oh and she is actress Diana Rigg's daughter--Rigg has hosted the Mystery series on PBS, which airs, among other goodies, all the Suchet Poirot episodes here stateside). Meanwhile, David Suchet also makes an appearance in A Perfect Murder (1998), in which Viggo Mortensen plays a painter that is not all that he appears to be.
Stirling as Caroline, along with Irish actor Aidan Gillen as the philandering husband artist in Pigs |
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