Action film’s ode to Agatha Christie
PHRYNE Fisher (Essie Davis) has a knack for poking her freshly powdered nose in where it’s not wanted – and escaping relatively unscathed.
So it’s hardly out of character for the intrepid lady detective to be causing a major ruckus in Palestine, around the time of the Buraq Uprising, in her continent-hopping movie debut.
Although the stakes have obviously been raised in conjunction with the film’s feature-sized budget.
In The Crypt Of Tears’ attentiongrabbing opening sequence, Fisher — disguised under a bedazzling hijab — leads law enforcement authorities on a merry chase through the back alleyways of Jerusalem.
Changing into a natty scarlet ensemble — Fisher prefers to stand out rather than blend in, even when camouflage would be far more prudent — she successfully liberates a young Bedouin woman from jail with the help of a pastry-selling passer-by and his donkey.
One might argue that the Australian sleuth’s colonial roots, combined with her gender and 1920s, Agatha Christie-associations, all go some way to mitigating the white saviour implications of the uneven relationship between Fisher and Shirin Abbas (Izabella Yena) – but it’s really the heroine’s Teflon-like ability to slip out of a sticky situation that saves the day here.
Those doe eyes, suggestively parted red lips, and striking outfits tend to distract the audience, as well as her suitors, from the character’s less attractive qualities (her sense of entitlement, for example, or her smugness).
And of course, The Crypt Of Tears’ spectacular Middle Eastern backdrop is tailor-made to support the seductive TV star’s transition to the big screen – Fisher was born to lead a camel trek across the sweeping sand dunes.
With the help of cinematographer
Roger Lanser, who shoots the hell out of the Moroccan desert, and a highly professional costume and make-up department, producers Deb Cox and Fiona Eagger and director Tony Tilse succeed in making the film’s, by international standards paltry, $8 million budget go a long way.
There’s a tongue-in-cheek chase sequence in which Fisher and Abbas leap on to the roof of a speeding train as it hurtles towards a tunnel and another fun scene in which Fisher gate
crashes her own funeral in a bright yellow biplane.
Whodunit conventions are honoured with a complicated backstory involving an ancient curse, a decadeold war crime, at least one corrupt representative of the British establishment and a handsome but potentially shady sheik.
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, based on the Kerry Greenwood novels, are diverting enough as a 50-minute television episode, but premise and protagonist are stretched a little thin over the course of an action adventure that is double that length (101 minutes).
As a character, Fisher isn’t quite as clever or coquettish as she — or the filmmakers — think.
And while her attitudes to marriage and same sex relationships are ahead of their time, her skills as a kick-arse female action hero feel decidedly dated.