Damn, winter came back with a vengeance. It'll be freezing for several nights, and there may be snow later in the week. Glad I took care of my errands this weekend.
Anyway, I saw the new French Count of Monte Cristo and it was good. The plot is not quite the same as the novel because they have cut some subplots and characters to simplify the story. Also they combine and alter some characters. For example, in the book, the prosecutor Villefort had a Bonapartist father, but this scandalous relative instead becomes his sister Angele in the film, and she also rescues the illegitimate child that Villefort attempts to kill. This will be the boy that Dantes will adopt and make part of his revenge schemes.
The lead actor Pierre Niney is amazing, able to act well even while in disguise. Edmond Dantes not only adopts his Count of Monte Cristo persona, but also pretends to be an Abbe Busoni as well as a crass Lord Halifax from England. In the story he's supposed to be wearing some kind of fabricated mask but I'm sure in practice it probably needs to be prosthetics and makeup that allow his face to still move naturally. There's a great scene where the Count has the purchased the house where the illegitimate child was buried, and he invites his victims to dinner there. He pretends the house is haunted by the ghost and that the spirit led him to a chest buried in the garden. The Count presents it as a spooky ghost story, and the women are frightened but one of the men is obliviously enjoying the tale as pure entertainment. The diners dismiss the whole thing as a magical parlor trick, but of course two of the guests know about the real baby.
I liked the film overall, though it is almost 3 hours long and I had to miss a scene to run to the bathroom.
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