Director: Tony Tilse
Starring: Essie Davis, Nathan Page, Izabella Yena, Miriam Margolyes
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 101 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2020

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Rating notes: Mature themes and violence

This Australian mystery-adventure film is based on the television series, “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries”, and the series of Phryne Fisher novels, authored by Kerry Greenwood which began in 1989. The film tells the story of Miss Fisher’s efforts to solve a decade-old mystery involving a girl’s traumatic memories, associated also with priceless emeralds and ancient curses. The film was purchased for theatrical distribution sight unseen, given the extraordinary popularity of the television series. The  adventure film picks up the plot from the end of the third series of the TV programmes. New guest stars are Rupert Penry-Jones, Daniel Lapaine, and Jacqueline McKenzie, and the movie is the first of an anticipated cinema trilogy of Phryne Fisher films.

The key features of the television series are clearly evident. Miss Fisher (Esse Davis) is an independent, spirited and confidently determined crime-solver. She works as a private detective, and is always on the cusp of declaring her love for Detective Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page), who mostly returns her glances with strictly controlled gestures of ardent admiration and repressed affection. Accompanying the adventures (and amorous interactions) is an amazing diversity of wonderful clothes that Miss Fisher flaunts ostentatiously for distraction. Except for the final scene, everything is imbedded into a context of high adventure criminal activity that edges both Miss Fisher and Jack Robinson a little closer, but never entirely, to a mutually expressed affectionate relationship.

Be-fitting expectancies of cross-cultural significance, the film makes excellent use of a wide variety of international locations, as it flits from Melbourne to London, the Far East, and beyond.

Years before, Fisher freed a young Bedouin girl, by the name of Shirin Abbas (Izabella Yena) from unjust internment in a Jerusalem prison. Shirin was thrown into jail in British controlled Palestine for causing trouble at a time of colonial unrest. Mystery remains, however, behind what really happened in Shirin’s childhood. After the escape from Jerusalem, Phryne pledges to Shirin in the company of Lord and Lady Lofthouse (Daniel Lapaine and Jacqueline McKenzje) that she will discover the truth. The Crypt of Tears, which supplies the title of the movie, is an ancient crypt lying somewhere beneath the sands of the Negev Desert in Israel, that promises to reveal all.

Shirin remembers her village being massacred, and Phryne pledges to discover the truth behind her memory. When Miss Fisher and Jack Robinson witness the murder of an army deserter who gives Phryne an ancient encrypted pendent just before he is killed, the plot-line of mysterious events picks up pace and goes into overdrive.

Treasure is involved and there are multiple murders along the way. Miss Fisher is always glamorously active in everything she does. Dependably dressed for instant success in a perfectly colour-coordinated way, she sabre-fights, flies a plane solo, discharges a gold-tipped gun she always happens to have on her clothes, and jumps from a cliff onto the top of a fast-moving train.

One reacts to this movie by pleasurably appreciating what one enjoyed about the television series. The film throws an international net over it all. Locations are busier, more active, and more wide-screen in appeal. The film is cross-culturally more interesting, and key features of what made the television series so popular remain reliably intact.

There are two more films to come, and Jack Robinson has yet to fully face how he can affectionately relate to a woman who secretly loves him, but is determined to stay as  independent as she can. This a film that will keep the admirers of Miss Phryne satisfied, but eager to see what the next film in the series will show, particularly as far as Detective Jack Robinson is concerned after Miss Fisher forces his hand.

Peter W. Sheehan is Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting