“A Talent for Murder” opens up on one of the scariest things of all – a blank page. At least, the scariest thing for a naive publishing assistant. Especially when dealing with a client as notorious as Patricia Highsmith.
Directed by Anton Corbijn and written by Joanna Murray-Smith (adapted from her play “Switzerland’), “A Talent for Murder” imagines said publishing assistant, Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich), on a trip to Switzerland in 1995 to try and persuade Highsmith (Helen Mirren) to write one more installment of her famous Tom Ripley series – something she is determined not to do. What ensues is a battle of wits between an ornery, cunning, and bitter old broad and a neurotic, anxious young man – or is he?
“A Talent for Murder” is a delightful meta take on the Highsmith oeuvre, exploring the relationship between an author and her creation, and pinpointing the aspects of her work and specifically the Tom Ripley character that are so utterly beguiling.
When Edward arrives at Highsmith’s home, he’s in quite a bind. It’s very possible he’ll lose his job if he can’t convince Highsmith to write another book, and the man who tried before him has seemingly disappeared without a trace. Corbijn has fun playing with the horror-adjacent qualities of Highsmith’s decision to live alone, tucked away in the mountains – when she doesn’t answer the door at first, Edward peers through a window and is startled by the sudden appearance of her pale visage, a ghost glaring at his sudden intrusion. “I rang the bell,” he squeaks out, pitifully.
Edward is a bit of a squeaker, you see – and watching his timidity go toe-to-toe with Highsmith’s force of will is half the fun. But, while Edward starts out as a meek puppy ready to flee, his identity becomes harder to pin down as the film goes along. About a third of the way through, he and Highsmith begin imagining what a final Ripley novel might look like, using a beautiful woman that Edward met on the train – Clementine Balfour (Olivia Cooke) – for inspiration. In these imagined sequences, Ehrenreich also plays the part of the Ripley character, wining and dining Clementine all across Rome – and murdering her extended family members on the side to gain access to her sizable fortune.
It’s during these moments that Murray-Smith’s deliciously fun script and Ehrenreich’s precise performance capture the essence of what makes Ripley so enduring – and the secret to Edward’s ever-changing persona is locked up in that answer. Ripley is about artifice in so many ways – he is a con man, after all – but on a deeper level, Ripley is also about truth. Here is a man willing to live how he pleases, no matter the costs. Here is a man that someone like Edward Ridgeway can only fantasize about becoming.
But, is it a fantasy or not? “A Talent for Murder” is a little murky in those distinctions, framed in a way that makes us wonder how much the author – how much Highsmith – is manipulating our perception of events. It also makes us consider how characters live beyond their creator, feeding into a lively tale about where the author ends and Tom Ripley begins.
