Cracks - 2009 film review

Cracks is a film set in a girls' boarding school in the 1930s. It's a psychological thriller which I'd never heard of before, but the fact that it starred Eva Green, Imogen Poots, Juno Temple, and Sinead Cusack - four high-calibre performers - suggested to me that it was well worth a watch. And so it was, despite various flaws. The director is Jordan Scott, director of Ridley Scott, and she does a good job. In visual terms, it's a very appealing film.

Green plays Miss G, a charismatic young teacher who is adored by a group of her pupils. She's unconventional, with an apparently exotic past, and she is particularly close to Di, played by Temple, whose performance I feel is the best in the film. The status quo is disturbed when an attractive but enigmatic young Spanish aristocrat (played by Maria Valverde) arrives at at the school. 

The other girls take a dislike to the newcomer, but Miss G is charmed by her. Inevitably, Di becomes jealous. Our impression that Miss G is not really the exciting charmer she seems to be is confirmed and before long, relationships within the group become febrile. 

The main problem is that the pace is too slow, and that the script isn't as tight as it might have been. One has only to think of that brilliantly sinister school film Unman, Wittering and Zigo to realise that the potential of the situation isn't as fully realised as it might have been. The ironic finale isn't bad, but I felt slightly frustrated that a movie that might have been really gripping didn't work as well as I'd hoped. One of Miss G's girls is called Fuzzy and the storyline of Cracks itself is also rather fuzzy.

Agatha Christie's Poirot - Dead Man's Folly - ITV review

Dead Man's Folly, the second in the current series of Agatha Christie's Poirot, was based on a novel from the 50s, when the Queen of Crime's work was rather more variable than it had been a few years earlier. The book has some delicious elements, although the solution has always struck me as rather contrived. The ITV version with David Suchet made the most of the story's merits, notably the marvellous country house and village fete settng.

And to make things even better, a very good decision was taken to film the story at Greenway. Christie used her own home in Devon, and its marvellous grounds, in fictional form for the book, so this was a very appropriate homage. I was also reminded strongly of a marvellously sunny day last year, when I had the memorable experience of revisiting Greenway in the company of that great Christie expert John Curran.

Zoe Wanamaker was an effervescent Mrs Oliver as usual, with Sinead Cusack very good in the important part of Mrs Folliat. The early scenes, when Poirot arrives at Nasse House and meets the house guests, and when the fete takes place, were very well done. As in the book, things faltered slightly after the discovery that a teenage girl has been murdered, and the suspects were not perhaps as strongly developed as they might have been. Overall, the screenplay was faithful to the original both in its strengths and its shortcomings, with a slight change to the ending. Verdict - not a classic,but good light entertainment.