Toronto film festival: A fictionalised version of the cantankerous crime author plots a murder with an ambitious editor in a story in need of a sharper edge
The restrictions of Covid led to an inevitable rise in safely contained chamber-piece movies, where a handful of characters find themselves in a usually remote house, dialogue taking obvious precedence over action. There were some highlights, such Kevin Williamson’s timely slasher Sick, and some considerable low points, such as Sam Levinson’s vapid drama Malcolm & Marie, but while we had plenty of them, none of them rivalled some of the greatest and smartest pre-pandemic examples. The very best tended to be based on plays and quite often starred Michael Caine.
He was in Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, which went from Tony to Oscar success back in the 1970s, and then the arguably even better Deathtrap in the decade after, which Sidney Lumet adapted from Ira Levin’s deviously plotted play. In between there was also an under-seen TV movie called One of My Wives Is Missing, based on 60s play Trap for a Single Man, which was notably lesser but still delivered a similarly specific brand of twisty, talky thrills. There would be secrets, surprises, reversals and usually at least one dead body by the end of it, a subgenre entirely indebted to the work of Agatha Christie (who reportedly loved Sleuth on stage so much that she dedicated a picture of herself to be hung in the house used in the big screen adaptation). The bar is therefore held rather high, a puzzle that requires an ingenious level of writing that needs to be smart without smug and shocking without feeling cheap.
