Still Life: A Three Pines Mystery

I love the Gamache books and was so excited for the movie. What a painful disappointment. Nathaniel Parker is definitely not the Gamache I imagined, but the most astounding miscast is Clara. Louise Penny's descriptions are closer to Helena Bonham-Carter than the beautiful blonde actress playing the character. Clara is unkempt, always has crumbs in her hair and paint smudges on her face, has no fashion sense and frizzy hair. By contrast, the Clara in the movie is straight out of a Hollywood red carpet.

Don't even get me started on Myrna (who is not only about 100kg off, but never has a chance to say a line and is not even referred to by name).

Yet, I feel that (mis)casting is not the complete issue here. Someone needs to tell the screenwriter that book adaptations to screen are not required to use the book dialogue word for word. What works in a book sounds clunky and is difficult to deliver in a movie, no matter how good the actors may be. Adaptations are tough, yes, but the name says it all - take the essence and create your own dialogue! Meryl Streep and Anthony Hopkins couldn't deliver those lines with straight faces!

Just for fun, here is my Hollywood, award-winning dream cast, dead or alive:

Inspector Gamache - Geoffrey Rush or Jean Reno | Jean-Guy - Jean Dujardin | Clara - Rachel Weisz or Helena Bonham-Carter | Peter - Christian Bale | Gabri - Phillip Seymour Hoffman :-( | Olivier - Jared Leto | Ben - Adrien Brody | Ruth Zardo - Judy Dench | Myrna - Octavia Spencer

I wanted to like this movie, having read all of Louise Penney's atmospheric, intelligent, introspective books featuring Armand Gamache. How disappointing to find that all that has been reduced to soap opera standards. There is in the movie none of the sensitivity, insight, philosophizing that makes the books so compelling. The cast is impossibly good looking, with that plastic, every-hair-in-place, perfect make-up at all times look so common to made-for-TV movies. The characters, instead of being complex and unpredictable, are stilted, their utterances short, too fast, emotionless--a sign of poor direction and/or poor acting. The use of that husky, almost-whisper voice (who talks like that?) also betrays the cookie-cutter approach to this movie. Scenes are very short, pushing the plot ahead in only the barest, least thought-provoking manner. It's a shame to see Penney's deeply thoughtful works reduced to such shallowness. It was peculiar, as well, to see what Penney describes as the surreal, provocative artwork of murder-victim Jane,(thus killing off a main and recurring character in the books) represented as poorly-rendered American Primitive. Have the producers/director no loyalty to the books at all? If Penney is one of the executive producers, as referred to in other reviews, I cannot imagine that she feels the movie faithfully represents her literary work. I doubt, too, that she had much to say about it.

I have read all the books. Louise Penney has created a fascinating subculture in Quebec. The characters, starting with Inspector Gamache, are as well developed as any that I have read in this genre. It's sad that the first effort to dramatize this author's work is such a weak effort. Let's start with the fact that books and movies are different media. To compare them isn't always fair, but good movies made from good books are quite possible. History shows that (e.g. "To Kill a Mockingbird"). To start with, the movie is just plain dull. The script has no sparkle, no oomph. It seems like nothing ever comes to a point. Penney's characters are marvelous. Not only do they not look the part (bad casting) but the lines they deliver are lacking in breadth. Ruth is one of the most precious, almost frightening of the residents of Three Pines. She would never let Gamache push her around like he does in this film. There is no tension at all. Even when they go to the archer's house, the discovery is ho hum. I hope at some point, this author who has found herself atop the New York Times best seller list will get her due.

This picture was not a disappointment -- it was a travesty. If I were Louise Penny I would be on a rampage. This picture was miscast, stilted and perfunctory. How the charm and sensuality of the book could be intentionally reduced to this abomination is a testament only to the consistency of a lackluster effort. Maybe a mini series could manage the subtleties and nuances of the books. Really this could have been filmed anywhere - New England, the North Carolina mountains -- there was no flavor of a Canadian village so carefully created in the books. Gamache was reduced to a bilious sort of sourpuss and Jean Guy was more Miami Vice than Sûreté Du Québec.

Unlike other reviewers, I haven't read any of the Inspector Gamache series. But I love Nathaniel Parker, so I watched this.

Have to say it was a big bust.

It was directed in a static fashion and moved slowly. Also, the acting was pretty bad.

Even the mystery wasn't impressive, at least the way it was set up.

An elderly woman is killed in the woods by an arrow; she was beloved in the community, so who could have killed her and why?

Inspector Gamache (Parker) investigates. Someone called this "Inspector Lynley Goes to Quebec." I didn't find Parker like Inspector Lynley, who had quite a temper and wasn't anywhere as near as quiet as Gamache.

The characters were not well fleshed out.

All in all, kind of a waste. Reminded me of the Canadian films of Mary Higgins Clark movies - not well done.