Still Life: A Three Pines Mystery (2013)

Very well executed

Best movie ever!

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I've been eagerly awaiting the release of this in the US, and I was certainly not disappointed by the result. I'm a huge fan of mysteries, both in books and film, so I've sampled a wide array of material, some great, some terrible. Given that experience, I really don't know why some other reviewers didn't enjoy it.I absolutely love Louise Penny's novels, and it was great to see the characters brought to life so believably (particularly by Nathaniel Parker, who's one of my favorites). Like many others, I would certainly have enjoyed to see more scenes involving characters like Ruth and Myrna, but I understand that only so much could be fit into one TV movie, and so some sacrifices had to be made. Also, it's worth noting that some of these characters really began to develop more in the ensuing novels anyway, so there's still time.What I would respectfully ask of everyone who didn't enjoy this film is to reserve full judgement in hopes that a sequel or two can be made, giving the writers and actors more time to fully draw out the depths of the story. After all, many shows have improved significantly after the pilot episode, and I see no reason why that couldn't be the case here. All in all, I consider this a very successful adaptation of a great novel, and I sincerely hope we'll see more from this cast and crew in the world of Three Pines!

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.

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.

All in all, an excellent movie, very enjoyable. I discount all the comments made by other reviewers that the cast is not as depicted in the book. All movie directors use literary licence to make changes. Louise Penny was the executive producer, and must have given her blessing. All the actors really performed very well.However .... 1. Jane's dog "Lucy" is definitely male, not female. 2. Agent Nicolle is called the french pronounciation at the beginning of the movie, but later her name is pronounced 'Nickle'. 3. The french intonations and accents are not consistent, but come and go. 4. The arrow that Clara sees embedded in the tree is black with small white fleches, but the arrow that Beauvoir removes from the tree is brown, is longer, and has large white fleches. hf1934.