MISS FISHER AND THE CRYPT OF TEARS
***
Director: Tony Tilse
Screenwriter: Deborah Cox
Principal cast:
Essie Davis
Nathan Page
Kal Naga
Izabella Yena
Rupert Penry-Jones
Daniel Lapaine
Miriam Margolyes
Country: Australia
Classification: M
Runtime: 101 mins.
Australian release date: 27 February 2020.
Essie Davis is a chameleon. She’s currently in cinemas starring in Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears, the first big screen spin-off of her highly popular small screen series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and, as amateur sleuth Phryne Fisher, she’s one hundred percent Roaring Twenties glamour and glitz. Her appearance couldn’t be further removed from that of her recent role as Ellen Kelly, Ned’s mother, in True History Of The Kelly Gang, a portrayal that required her to look and act like a frumpy virago, a repulsive harpy dressed in rags. If you showed an image of both women adjacent to each other, you’d be hard-pressed to say it was the same actress. It’s an incredible transformation.
Ploughing the same earth as Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express, Deb Cox’s screenplay of Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears incorporates not only tropes from those wonderful Poirot mysteries (albeit with a much more energetic detective at its core) but also reunites all our favourite characters from the television series. It begins in Palestine in 1929, with Miss Fisher arranging the high-camp daring escape of a young Bedouin woman, Shirin Abbas (Izabella Yena), from a garret in Jerusalem. As they leap aboard a moving train, however, Phryne goes missing, presumed dead. Naturally, news of her demise reaches her doting protégé Dot (Ashley Cummings) and Dot’s policeman partner Constable Hugh Collins (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) plus, of course, Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page), her perennial Will They? Won’t They? love interest in Melbourne. Jack dashes to England but we already know that a film with ‘Miss Fisher’ in the title won’t be without its heroine for long and soon there is a reunion of the smouldering pair. From then on, it’s all murder and intrigue, a prophetic curse and a missing emerald, double-crosses and double-dealing and solving the mystery behind the disappearance of Shirin’s tribe. You know the sort of thing. Kerry Greenwood, the author of the original Miss Fisher books, has given Cox’s plot her seal of approval and you can’t ask for more than that.
Director Tony Tilse is well-known for his successful, prolific work on TV, with a record that stretches back to Corelli and G.P. in 1995. While he’s made a number of films for television in his time, this is the first feature he’s made primarily for the cinema and he can’t quite shake off his Sunday night telemovie instincts. Certainly, his canvas is much bigger than usual and he’s made good use of Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears’ exotic Moroccan locations but, as Producer Fiona Eagger, Deb Cox’s partner in Every Cloud Productions, says “… while we had a very clear idea of who Phryne Fisher is and her appeal to audiences, a feature film is a very different beast to a television series.” Happily, the key points that lovers of the series relish, namely the beautiful costumes and the high production values, remain as strong elements of the film and Miss Fisher’s outfits are crucial to the mise en scène - they are a feather in the cloche of Margot Wilson.
It’s interesting to note that fans of the TV series helped bring the film to life via a massive crowdfunding campaign that raised a large part of the budget, making it the most successful crowdfunding drive in Australia to date. This is a reflection of just how popular the series were, not just in this territory but internationally (it sold to 179 countries). Fans will love the movie of Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears and, if you’re one of the few people not familiar with Essie Davis’s character, you’re in for a fun introduction to a different kind of feminist action-heroine.
Screenwriter: Deborah Cox
Principal cast:
Essie Davis
Nathan Page
Kal Naga
Izabella Yena
Rupert Penry-Jones
Daniel Lapaine
Miriam Margolyes
Country: Australia
Classification: M
Runtime: 101 mins.
Australian release date: 27 February 2020.
Essie Davis is a chameleon. She’s currently in cinemas starring in Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears, the first big screen spin-off of her highly popular small screen series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and, as amateur sleuth Phryne Fisher, she’s one hundred percent Roaring Twenties glamour and glitz. Her appearance couldn’t be further removed from that of her recent role as Ellen Kelly, Ned’s mother, in True History Of The Kelly Gang, a portrayal that required her to look and act like a frumpy virago, a repulsive harpy dressed in rags. If you showed an image of both women adjacent to each other, you’d be hard-pressed to say it was the same actress. It’s an incredible transformation.
Ploughing the same earth as Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express, Deb Cox’s screenplay of Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears incorporates not only tropes from those wonderful Poirot mysteries (albeit with a much more energetic detective at its core) but also reunites all our favourite characters from the television series. It begins in Palestine in 1929, with Miss Fisher arranging the high-camp daring escape of a young Bedouin woman, Shirin Abbas (Izabella Yena), from a garret in Jerusalem. As they leap aboard a moving train, however, Phryne goes missing, presumed dead. Naturally, news of her demise reaches her doting protégé Dot (Ashley Cummings) and Dot’s policeman partner Constable Hugh Collins (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) plus, of course, Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page), her perennial Will They? Won’t They? love interest in Melbourne. Jack dashes to England but we already know that a film with ‘Miss Fisher’ in the title won’t be without its heroine for long and soon there is a reunion of the smouldering pair. From then on, it’s all murder and intrigue, a prophetic curse and a missing emerald, double-crosses and double-dealing and solving the mystery behind the disappearance of Shirin’s tribe. You know the sort of thing. Kerry Greenwood, the author of the original Miss Fisher books, has given Cox’s plot her seal of approval and you can’t ask for more than that.
Director Tony Tilse is well-known for his successful, prolific work on TV, with a record that stretches back to Corelli and G.P. in 1995. While he’s made a number of films for television in his time, this is the first feature he’s made primarily for the cinema and he can’t quite shake off his Sunday night telemovie instincts. Certainly, his canvas is much bigger than usual and he’s made good use of Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears’ exotic Moroccan locations but, as Producer Fiona Eagger, Deb Cox’s partner in Every Cloud Productions, says “… while we had a very clear idea of who Phryne Fisher is and her appeal to audiences, a feature film is a very different beast to a television series.” Happily, the key points that lovers of the series relish, namely the beautiful costumes and the high production values, remain as strong elements of the film and Miss Fisher’s outfits are crucial to the mise en scène - they are a feather in the cloche of Margot Wilson.
It’s interesting to note that fans of the TV series helped bring the film to life via a massive crowdfunding campaign that raised a large part of the budget, making it the most successful crowdfunding drive in Australia to date. This is a reflection of just how popular the series were, not just in this territory but internationally (it sold to 179 countries). Fans will love the movie of Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears and, if you’re one of the few people not familiar with Essie Davis’s character, you’re in for a fun introduction to a different kind of feminist action-heroine.