Sleeping Murder was released in 2006 but set in 1951. It was directed by Edward Hall and adapted from the original book by Stephen Churchett and runs for just under 100 minutes with a UK certification of 12.
Gwenda Halliday has come to England from India for the first time to find a home for her fianc and herself to live in once they're married. She is met by Hugh Hornbeam; an associate of her fiance's and he has the job of helping her out wherever needed. She finds what she feels is the perfect house in a place called Dillmouth and purchasing it, she sets about refurbishing it to her own tastes. Three specific incidents in the house lead her to believe a murder was committed there of someone named Helen. With the help of Hornbeam and Miss Marple (who just happens to be someone that Hornbeam is acquainted with) they set about finding out who previously lived in the house and they find out that Gwenda had lived there as a child with her father who was engaged to a woman named Helen who by all accounts seems to have had several men in love with her. She finds her uncle Dr Kennedy still lives in Dillmouth and starts to get to know him and slowly piece together what happened 18 years ago when she believes Helen was murdered. Will she find out the truth? Will her investigations lead to danger for her? Will anyone else get killed or was it all a strange dream?
Sleeping Murder was the last book in the Miss Marple series and wasn't published till after Agatha Christie's death. The book is one of my favorite Christie novels so I was keen to see how they dealt with the story in film after having seen the Joan Hickson version some time ago but not remembering very much about it aside from the fact that it was fairly close storyline-wise to the book version.
Watching this 2006 version with Geraldine McEwan in the lead, I was rather astonished at the liberties that had been taken with the characters and the story generally as it was a rather different adaptation to the original story. I was quite confused watching the whole film as there were just so many differences between the novel and some of them were very significant. I'll try to address my analysis of the film largely as if it were a story I did not know as the actors can't be faulted for the screenplay adaptation.
Sophia Myles plays the newly engaged Gwenda Halliday, a pretty young woman in her early 20s who thinks she has found her dream house. But pretty soon she starts to get strange
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by Anony Mili
Sleeping Murder was released in 2006 but set in 1951. It was directed by Edward Hall and adapted from the original book
by Sun Meilan
After having lived in India all her life, Gwenda Halliday moves to England to find a house for her and her husband-to-be
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