Director: Anton Corbijn
Writer: Joanna Murray-Smith
Stars: Helen Mirren, Alden Ehrenreich, Olivia Cooke
Synopsis: A mysterious young man from a New York publisher is sent to Switzerland to persuade the renowned writer Patricia Highsmith to write one final installment of the Ripley anthology.
When adapting from a book or prose of any kind, a filmmaker gets a world and rich details to pull from. When adapting from a play or performance, a filmmaker gets a strong sense of character and dialogue to play with. A Talent for Murder is based on a play, but within the film, the characters, a fictionalized Patricia Highsmith (Helen Mirren) and a young man sent by her publisher, Edward (Alden Ehrenreich), are working on the construct for a novel in which some of the people Edward has recently met enjoy a second life. In this sense it’s almost like a double adaptation. This confusing intertwining of narratives muddies the waters of the metatextual, textual, and subtextual actions within the film.
The question is whether A Talent for Murder succeeds at pulling and manipulating these narrative threads to some satisfaction. The confusing ideas toward the end of the film move us toward the negative. While there is a feeling of something sinister throughout the main action of the film, it feels like the resolution is overly complicated. Everything ends up being nebulous. If you think about it, really parse through it, you can see where there may be a way toward something conclusive as seen on screen, but it’s a bit too much brainwork to ask a casual viewer. Highsmith wasn’t always a conclusive writer, leaving things to the deeper and darker imaginations of her readers, but this fictionalized version of her process doesn’t have to be that way.
For most of the film there are two stories going on that mirror each other. Each could be a potential “Ripley” type story, one that features Highsmith’s most well known protagonist, Tom Ripley. Though, it may have made A Talent for Murder a more compelling film if the filmmakers chose one or the other narratives. As they are, the stories bump into each other in some tedium when it comes to the main story’s momentum. The stories and characters are far enough apart in style and mood that they are able to coexist, but the fact that they do is what muddles everything at the end.
What is unmuddled and makes the film very watchable is in part the way it looks. Director Anton Corbijn and cinematographer Robbie Ryan have created a look for the film that plays with light and shadow in terrific ways. There are scenes where Edward is bathed in darkness, but we can pick out every aspect of him. The same goes for his fictional counterpart as he schemes his way to a more comfortable life. The firelight and low lighting of Highsmith’s study is also a play on this with shadows playing on people’s faces. So much of the film is about the complicated nature of the light and darkness within us all that it is exciting to see that reflected in the visuals.
The same excitement can be attached to Helen Mirren’s performance as Patricia Highsmith. She’s devious, cunning, and about three steps ahead of everyone else. Mirren tackles this material with her usual aplomb and tenacity. Her physical presence is not so much in the complicated movements, but in the throwaway movements. These movements that we might not otherwise notice become imbued with new meaning and a grace. There’s a particularly fascinating one as she gestures to where Edward will be spending the night. Without a word, she stretches out her arm and points. Edward must interpret that as he can. Mirren seems to relish this part and she makes this unpleasant and almost uncompromising character utterly enthralling.
A Talent for Murder is a bit of a mixed bag. Its two stories are compelling and its performances engrossing, but its lack of overt answers is frustrating. You can feel it start to slip away about two thirds of the way through. How you interpret the end of the story is likely going to influence how much you like the film as a whole. In that way it’s not a film to recommend to casual viewers, but those who go in with a head for interpretation and dissection.
