Helen Mirren may be a beloved dame, but she’s having quite a diabolical autumn courtesy of this weekend’s second season of MobLand and, now, A Talent for Murder.
Playing a fictionalized version of legendary crime author Patricia Highsmith, the Oscar-winning star scowls, schemes, and slices necks (or does she?) in Anton Corbijn’s playful adaptation of Joanna Murray-Smith’s 2014 play Switzerland, which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival ahead of its Oct. 23 theatrical release.
An antisocial recluse whose ill temper is born from both her distaste for people and her nagging writer’s block, she’s an artist of cagey lethality, and the actress’ performance is the acrimonious engine that powers this clever game of cat and mouse.
Entrenched in her Swiss home, taunted by the blank page in her typewriter, Patricia cuts a mean figure. With brown bangs and in a button-down shirt, trousers, and a vest, she’s severeness incarnate. Expectedly, she’s none too pleased with the arrival of Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich), the latest employee from her publisher to visit in the hopes of having her sign a contract for a sixth novel featuring her chameleon-like con man, Tom Ripley.
Patricia has no interest in this deal or in revisiting her most iconic character, and she greets Edward nastily, all while announcing that she has no moral compass and (with across-the-board intolerance) that she fled New York City to escape its “dregs.”
Patricia attempts to cast this interloper out of her house, but he manages to extend his stay through a mixture of flattery (praising Ripley as “the most beguilingly evil villain in literature”) and boldness, as he claims to know her work better than anyone alive and can help her complete a new Ripley book. Patricia naturally scoffs at this idea, proving far more interested in the goods he’s brought her: notepads, cans of soup, and, most enticingly, a gleaming French knife that she adds to her study wall’s collection of weapons.
Mirren sneers, snipes, and shuffles about as the haughty and misanthropic Patricia, praising misery and anxiety as emotions far more valuable than happiness, and badmouthing Edward for his timidity. Even so, he convinces her to let him stay the night, and later, he notices that carved into his bedframe are the initials of a coworker who went missing after visiting her—suggesting that Patricia and Ripley might be more alike than anyone suspects. Murray-Smith’s script moves at such a fast clip, however, that it’s not long before all sorts of potentially nefarious intimations pile up, including an introductory moment which insinuates that there’s more to this set-up than meets the eye.
A Talent for Murder is a two-hander à la 1972’s Sleuth, in which Laurence Olivier’s crime writer goes head-to-head in his residence with Michael Caine’s younger adversary, and Mirren and Ehrenreich’s chemistry is at once prickly and seductive. Mirren’s caustic insults and threats are colored by faint traces of delight, as if she were enjoying this testy encounter.
That impression is reinforced in a later scene in which she giggles with delighted surprise at her own audacity. She’s an egomaniacal shut-in who believes herself to be a “genius” and is desperate to demonstrate it to her fawning guest. And her habit of startling Edward by revealing that she’s sitting in chairs in the dark is an amusing expression of her wicked mischievousness.
Corbijn lets his leads spar without stepping on their toes. Nonetheless, his canny use of mirrors, doorways, and additional framing devices keeps the material from feeling stagey. So too does a narrative structure that blurs the line between fiction and reality, thanks to dramatizations of the cunning yarn that Patricia and Edward begin jointly spinning.
This tale concerns a dapper stranger (Ehrenreich) who seduces an heiress (Olivia Cooke) and then sets about offing the relatives who stand in the way of her inheritance. Quite obviously, it’s inspired by Edward’s encounter—on his way to see Patricia—with Clementine Balfour (also Cooke), with whom he has instant sparks and, before long, reconnects during his private time in Switzerland.
Edward and Clementine make for a steamy would-be couple, and A Talent for Murder laces their dynamic with hints of danger and duplicity. Whereas Cooke’s dual roles are more or less the same (to a degree that shortchanges the talented House of the Dragon actress), Ehrenreich gets the opportunity to move freely between ordinary and wimpy (as Edward) and suave and cutthroat (as his fictional proxy), and he’s most captivating when he’s opposite Mirren.
With a glare that’s as sharp as the blade she’s so pleased to have received, the star exudes titanic intellect and sinister, serpentine slyness as the author. Thus, it’s somewhat deflating that, for prolonged stretches (especially in the film’s second half), she takes a backseat to sequences involving her and Edward’s collaborative tome.
A Talent for Murder intends to keep its audience guessing to the very end, but at a certain juncture, it’s too easy to see through its ruses and obfuscations. That’s not a fatal flaw, since Mirren and Ehrenreich—who, three years after Fair Play, remains well-suited for treacherous male-female face-offs—are a delightfully hostile two-sides-of-the-same-coin duo. Still, the proceedings’ predictability does lessen its climactic pleasures, right up to a final tease that was foreseeable from the outset.
The relationship between artists and admirers is as thorny as the connection shared by creators and their creations, and when it’s humming, A Talent for Murder tangles such bonds in intriguing knots. For his first dramatic feature in 11 years, illustrious music video veteran Corbijn flip-flops between multiple points of interest without losing the primary thread.
Though his latest isn’t as visually interesting as some of his past work, a shot of Ehrenreich in the bathroom —his visage reflected in starkly different ways—is a telling and memorable evocation of his fractured identity, which, naturally, makes him a kindred spirit to another Patricia acquaintance.
Mostly, however, A Talent for Murder is an opportunity to watch Mirren flex her muscles as a character who’s several things at once—and nothing like any of her recent roles. Wily and intimidating, her turn gives this murderous mystery its requisite Machiavellian menace and mirthfulness.
