GRADE: B-

By the mid-1920s, author Agatha Christie was already considered to be one of literature’s pre-eminent talents. That talent made her a global celebrity, a superstar by today’s standards, and certainly one of her native England’s bona fide national treasures.

In 1914, before she gained worldwide attention and acclaim, then Agatha Miller (her maiden name) married Captain Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. Though others found Mrs. Christie an intelligent and handsome woman, she possessed a poor self-image and considered herself ungainly and unattractive. Petrified of the public, she rarely went anywhere unless accompanied by her husband.

Those insecurities intensified when she learned that her husband was having an affair with a woman by the name of Nancy Neele, a discovery that plunged Christie into a deep depression. But her pleas for him to end the relationship with Neele seem to have pushed him further from her, resulting in his demand for a divorce.

Eventually the couple would divorce in 1928, but two years before that happened, the by now famous author would become the subject of much unwanted publicity and a sensational manhunt when on December 3, 1926 Christie, following a night of arguing with her husband, simply disappeared.

While no plausible or even credible explanation was ever offered by Christie to explain her disappearance (until her death in 1976 she maintained she had experienced amnesia and did not remember anything of what had happened), “Agatha” screenwriters Kathleen Tynan and Arthur Hopcraft have fashioned a clever and sublime speculation about what might have occurred during those mysterious 11 days in December.

Ironically, one of the critical complaints with “Agatha” was that the story and narrative were enigmatic and nearly inaccessible, a feeling shared by most who witnessed it unfold in real life—as with the film, both generated a wide variety of opinion, but never any real consensus.

In attempting to define that mystery, the motivations behind it, and the aftermath of it, director Michael Apted has crafted a sumptuous, but dark chamber piece, a successful blend of period drama, biopic and character study with an underlying tone of suspense (much like many of Christie’s novels and short stories).

Venessa Redgrave gives a fine, understated performance as the melancholy author while co-star Dustin Hoffman manages to add more than detract as a fictitious American newspaper columnist pursuing the story (their many scenes together generate a quiet but palpable electricity). The period detail is brilliantly reproduced by art director Simon Holland and captured, perhaps a bit too darkly, by lauded cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.

Though dismissed by some at the time as a mere curiosity, “Agatha” is much more than a historical footnote. While flawed and occasionally tepid, it’s sure to please mystery aficionados, fans of Redgrave and Hoffman and those who appreciate a well-defined milieu. Besides, the film remains the only cinematic depiction of this small, but tantalizing slice of history; if nothing else noteworthy for that alone.

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