In Kenneth Branagh‘s next film as Hercule Poirot, A Haunting in Venice, we will – finally – meet the friendly and intelligent Ariadne Oliver, another famous character from the brilliant mind of Agatha Christie. Given that in the books Ariadne is a best-selling author of mysteries, fans immediately bet that she would be the author’s alter ego. Is she really?

“I never draw my stories from real life, but the character of Ariadne Oliver has a strong hint of myself,” she admitted in 1956. Nor could she deny it. Also, Ariadne, like Agatha (did you notice that both begin with “A”?) hates her detective from the books, the Finnish detective ‘Sven Hjerson’ and everyone knows that Christie’s poor and vain Belgian detective irritated her too. What many readers equally like to remember is that Ariadne is the indirect connection that ‘joins’ Poirot to Mrs Marple and who knows, maybe we’ll see more of the two?

In recent reshoots, we still hadn’t crossed paths with Ariadne, who will appear younger and in the skin of Tina Fey in A Haunting in Venice, soon in theaters. And who is Ariadne Oliver, if you are a beginner? She is a successful writer who appears in two short stories and seven novels by Christie, no less than six of which are with Hercule Poirot. In the books, she is a middle-aged, gray-haired lady, crazy about apples (like Agatha Christie!) and an absolute certainty in female intuition above logic. Poirot and Ariadne are good friends (no romance) and she helps him out sometimes.

It is unclear when and where they met, but she appears during the Cards on the Table mystery, where four detectives and four possible suspects play bridge after dinner with Mr. Shaitana, who is murdered later in the evening. Now there will be greater freedom from the original story because of the tale that is the basis for the film, Hallowe’en Party, in which Ariadne and Poirot meet at a Halloween party where a girl at the party claims to have witnessed a murder. Since she was too young at the time to realize anything, she is discredited, only after she turns up drowned in a bucket of apples later the same night that people start to wonder about the connection. Poirot must solve a double mystery: who killed the girl and what, if anything, did she witness?

If Hallowe’en Party wasn’t one of Christie’s most popular books (the 1986 film is on YouTube), it has more recently gained popularity. In Kenneth Branagh‘s film, the mysterious side of Venice will bring new elements to the story. We re-encounter Poirot 10 years after Death on the Nile, living in the Italian city, still pessimistic and embittered after dealing with revenge in Murder on the Orient Express and greed in Death on the Nile. On the eve of Halloween, he is ‘forced’ out of his self-imposed exile when his friend, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), asks for his help in unmasking a hoax of seances led by the medium Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh). Intrigued by the proposal, he accepts and, in the decaying and haunted palazzo of the famous opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), one of the guests is murdered. He and Ariadne have to discover the culprit together.

The original short story that is the basis of the film was published for the first time in 1969, already at the ‘end’ of the writer’s long and successful career, and is one of the most ‘beloved’ by fans, but it is not the only source for a story. almost ‘original’, since it borrows elements from other Christie stories that deal with the supernatural, like The Last Seance. Her true thoughts on the subject are clear in the texts.

While the original Hallowe’en Party was set in a country house in the countryside of England, with the theme of ‘ghosts’, Venice is even more somber in the haunted palazzo. “It became more of a chamber piece with fewer suspects,” explains Kenneth Branagh, adding that there are original spinoffs for the subplots. Which he considers perfect since Death on the Nile stayed true to the original material. “We feel that we hope to earn the right to make some changes, just to tell a slightly different story than what’s in the book. We have many references and it takes its DNA from the story. But we hoped that they would allow us to make the story a little more terrible”, continues the director and actor. “The original novel Hallowe’en Party takes place over several days, almost a week. A Haunting in Venice takes place on a haunted night. We’ve moved our location from the English countryside to haunted Venice and have a slightly different take on the characters. More than a few changes, but we believe it’s very much in line thematically.”

Ariadne’s change of nationality, now American, is one of the freedoms, but the curious relationship between her and the Belgian detective is not altered. “It’s an old friendship, and there’s a mix of comfort with each other, but also some underlying resentment, probably mutual, because she is so dependent on him to help her uncover these mysteries for her and he is a little resentful of the way he is – portrayed in his books as a kind of silly man-eating pastry all the time”, explains the actress. Obviously Poirot has a bit of a point because, in fact, Ariadne is in search of new material for a book and “believes that if Joyce can convince Poirot that she is real, she can base her next book on the woman who perplexed Hercule Poirot”, reveals.

As one of the producers of the work is precisely the great-grandson of Agatha Christie, and he approved the changes in the story because he thought that the tone and the same spirit were right. More so, choosing one of the lesser-known stories is what makes the third ‘new’ Poirot film interesting. Something to soon be revealed.

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