How much you know about novelist Patricia Highsmith’s mysteries and her central character, the con artist/serial killer Tom Ripley, will affect how much you get out of the new movie A TALENT FOR MURDER. Highsmith’s infamous character starred in five of her novels, appeared in numerous big- and small-screen productions, and has been played by everyone from Alain Delon to Andrew Scott. (Most people likely remember Matt Damon’s turn in THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY from 1999.) Still, if you’re unfamiliar with the character, much of this new film about a young New York publishing house representative trying to get the reclusive, aging Highsmith to pen one more Ripley page-turner will be hard to follow. However, if you know her greatest creation, this film will still register, even if it doesn’t quite capture the treacherous bite of her prose.
Highsmith always had a reputation for being reclusive and cranky, and the film leans into that from the get-go. Helen Mirren plays her that way, with a penchant for hard drinking and heavy smoking. She’s holed up in her Swiss Alps chalet, trudging around and refusing her New York publisher’s requests to write one last Ripley novel for money and posterity. Enter Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich), a bespectacled, earnest young man whose play seems overtly fawning, hoping it will persuade the curmudgeon to sit down at her typewriter once more.
The first act of this fictional work has a cat-and-mouse element to it, and the story leans into a battle of wills with a tinge of menace, like SLEUTH or DEATHTRAP. Unfortunately, the verbal sparring- and there is a lot of barking in it- doesn’t quite sing. Joanna Murray-Smith’s adaptation of her play SWITZERLAND loses the energy that likely kept it percolating with mostly two actors on stage. Here, it feels static as we wait for something more cinematic to kick in. Fortunately, it does in the second and third acts, as Ridgeway and Highsmith forge a temporary partnership through brainstorming, hoping it will unlock a potential sixth Ripley plot.
Soon, Ridgeway imagines himself as Ripley, acting out a new scheme to part a rich couple from their money. The long con has Ripley meet the duo’s attractive, susceptible niece, who stands to inherit the money if the two die, and hopes a whirlwind courtship will lead to marriage. And ultimately, to her inherited fortune. Ridgeway imagines the fetching young woman as the stranger he met on the train, Clementine Balfour, played by Olivia Cooke, one of the best and most compelling actresses of her generation.
The focus then turns to the fantasy sequences with Ehrenreich and Cooke playing out the imagined Ripley scenario. The film kicks up a notch in both glamour and intrigue as writer Murray-Smith and director Anton Corbijn present a new Ripley story almost whole cloth. Again, if you know Ripley, it’s a hoot; if not, you’ll enjoy it, though you may not appreciate all of its machinations and characteristics as much if you’re familiar with the bisexual, violent, seductive killer’s modus operandi.
I’ll leave matters there, not wanting to spoil some of the deliciously evil surprises in-store, but the Ripley story plays out so well that returning to Highsmith grumping about feels almost anticlimactic.
The acting is fine, though it doesn’t crackle or feel dangerous enough. The production design is elegant, but not exceptional. And the pacing and tone are engaging without ever quite becoming dangerous enough. If anything, it could have used more violence, more sensuality, and even sharper dialogue, including words that cut deeper. Mirren keeps trying to inject venom into the prose, but most of her lines are merely snide gay slurs that feel like an eighth grader would’ve conjured them, not the woman who gave us Ripley.
I’m a fan of Highsmith’s, so even this decent but softened work was enjoyable. Still, mystery fans, whether they know Highsmith or not, deserve a mystery/thriller with more bite.
