By John Corrado
Director Anton Corbijn’s A Talent for Murder is a very enjoyable portrait of The Talented Mr. Ripley author Patricia Highsmith, that works around the clever concept of being both a literary biopic and an imagined version of a sixth story featuring her most famous creation, Tom Ripley.
Set in 1995, the film follows Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich), a young literary agent from New York, who travels to Switzerland to meet with the reclusive Highsmith (played by Helen Mirren) at her home in the Swiss Alps.
Edward arrives with a contract for to write a sixth instalment in her Ripley series, but finds the author unwilling to engage. She would rather spend time with her pet snails and collection of weapons, and playing mind games with Edward, as it were.
Highsmith is only willing to entertain the idea of writing another crime story if Edward can help her come up with the perfect murder plot, causing elements of his real life to blend into the fiction they are creating. The film opens with Edward meeting a dashing young woman named Clementine Harriet Balfour (Olivia Cooke) on the train into Switzerland, a clear homage to Highsmith’s novel Strangers on a Train and the Alfred Hitchcock film that it inspired.
There is a playful and seductive feel to the film, highlighted by Corbijn’s crisp direction. Working from a screenplay by Joanna Murray-Smith, who is adapting her own play Switzerland for the screen, the film remains entertaining as it keeps shifting genres, sliding between literary drama and mystery. Murray-Smith’s screenplay works by paying tribute to Highsmith’s work, including the famously elusive character of Tom Ripley himself.
The slippery nature of the film requires subtle changes in Ehrenreich’s performance that make him very engaging to watch. Mirren also chews into the role of Highsmith, an author who is quite vocal with her quote-unquote “problematic” views, and hinting at her own capacity for murder. These two performances allow the film to work as a crackling chamber piece. As the plot thickens, so to speak, including an alluring story within a story, it’s a lot of fun to watch A Talent for Murder unfold.
