The Count of Monte Cristo with Pierre Niney – an adaptation with beautiful set designs, but a terrible script.

"The Count of Monte Cristo" (2024), written and directed by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, seems to have learned nothing from the masterful work of Alexandre's father, Denys de La Patellière, who directed the 1979 miniseries starring Jacques Weber in the lead role. Denys' adaptation was a gem, balancing fidelity to Dumas' text with an engaging narrative and deeply human characters. The 2024 version, unfortunately, falls short due to its superficiality and questionable narrative choices.

 What a masterpiece of creativity this 2024 adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo is! The highlight, without a doubt, is Edmond Dantès strutting around with a silicone mask covering his entire face – yes, silicone, that technological marvel that, shockingly, didn’t exist in the 19th century! It’s hilarious to picture the Count thinking no one would notice a smooth, shiny rubber face parading through Marseille and Paris in 1838. Seriously, people back then might have been naive, but they weren’t blind – anyone would instantly clock that it’s not human skin, just a grotesque disguise screaming “I’m an impostor trying to be fancy!” The movie tries to sell us this fantasy as if realistic masks were commonplace in an era of powdered wigs and mercury cures, and all we can do is laugh at the absurdity.

And, of course, we’ve got the pinnacle of romantic ridiculousness with Albert and Haydée, the improbable couple that cinema loves to shove down our throats: the traitor’s son and the traumatized victim, all lovey-dovey as if trauma were just a quaint little detail. Seriously, Haydée, carrying the weight of seeing her father, Ali Pasha, betrayed and butchered, would really fall head over heels for Fernand’s spoiled brat? Her unconscious must be a maze of horrors – slavery, loss, vengeance – yet here she’s turned into a swooning damsel who forgets it all for a pretty face. What a lovely cliché: the girl who seduces the enemy and – surprise! – falls for him, because nothing says “empowerment” like a script that ignores basic psychology.

And the final duel between Fernand and the Count? A cheap testosterone spectacle. Fernand, the big jealous villain, reduced to a pathetic whiner waving a sword, while Edmond, all noble and magnanimous, spares him because, get this, killing would be “too easy.” What depth, what innovation! It’s the kind of scene you watch rolling your eyes, picturing the writers patting themselves on the back for this “moral twist.” Meanwhile, Haydée and Albert’s romance plods along like tacky décor, a forced attempt at a “happy ending” for characters who deserved more narrative respect.