IMMACULATE PERCEPTION

THERE’S NO GETTING around it. Even if you could get around it, it would take some time.

In her books, Agatha Christie variously described Belgian detective Hercule Poirot’s facial furniture as gigantic, amazing and just plain enormous. In 2017’s Murder On The Orient Express , Kenneth Branagh’s debut outing as Poirot, it was overwhelming, and in sequel Death On The Nile , it is back with a vengeance. Russell Brand, who plays Dr Bessner, admired it on the set “the way one might a follicular mandala”, he tells Empire . “I don’t know how you would endeavour to construe such an extraordinary moustache. On close inspection it seems to be covering five or six mouths. It’s like an Escher drawing it’s an endless moustache, spiralling off into the infinite. An incredible thing. It’s beyond the confines of nature, certainly.”

Emma Mackey, who plays Jacqueline de Bellefort, agrees that it’s “quite a piece”, even though, she notes, Branagh “groomed it slightly for this one.” The trim is hardly noticeable. “It’s not quite as big,” confirms Branagh. “And there’s a reason for that, to be revealed during the course of the movie. Poirot’s complex love-life and moustache trajectory is part of the mystery unveiled by Death On The Nile .”

By all accounts, , while following a huge success — cost US$55 million and made US$353m worldwide — is condensing things in other ways, too, shrinking the (mostly new) ensemble a little, zeroing