The restrictions of Covid led to an inevitable rise in safely contained chamber-piece movies, where a handful of characters find themselves in a usually remote house, dialogue taking obvious precedence over action. There were some highlights, such Kevin Williamson’s timely slasher Sick, and some considerable low points, such as Sam Levinson’s vapid drama Malcolm & Marie, but while we had plenty of them, none of them rivalled some of the greatest and smartest pre-pandemic examples. The very best tended to be based on plays and quite often starred Michael Caine.
He was in Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, which went from Tony to Oscar success back in the 1970s, and then the arguably even better Deathtrap in the decade after, which Sidney Lumet adapted from Ira Levin’s deviously plotted play. In between there was also an under-seen TV movie called One of My Wives Is Missing, based on 60s play Trap for a Single Man, which was notably lesser but still delivered a similarly specific brand of twisty, talky thrills. There would be secrets, surprises, reversals and usually at least one dead body by the end of it, a subgenre entirely indebted to the work of Agatha Christie (who reportedly loved Sleuth on stage so much that she dedicated a picture of herself to be hung in the house used in the big screen adaptation).
The bar is therefore held rather high, a puzzle that requires an ingenious level of writing that needs to be smart without smug and shocking without feeling cheap. A Talent for Murder is an admirable, and rare, effort to bring that formula back, a biggish swing that almost lands. It’s again based on a play, and like both Sleuth and Deathtrap it’s based around a writer who weaves their way through a thriller plot of their own making.
Standing in for Caine is Helen Mirren playing a fictionalised version of Patricia Highsmith, a famously cantankerous and bigoted author who hated to be around people and, like most misanthropes, preferred animals instead. We meet her in 1995 as she drinks herself to death in a remote Switzerland home, no more books to be written, a tank full of snails and a barely seen cat to keep her company. Ambitious editor Edward (Alden Ehrenreich) is hoping to change that, the latest lamb to be sent to the slaughter all the way from New York.
He’s been tasked with getting Highsmith not just to write another new book (most of which have been “inconsistent”, as he later says) but, instead, another Tom Ripley caper. The Talented Mr Ripley remains her most beloved work, and he believes he can use his adoration of her and her work to get her back to the typewriter. But Highsmith is not going to take the advice of an “underling” and won’t become a “hooker for hire” like so many other authors.
In between making antisemitic and racist jabs (the film goes a little easy on her vilest of views), she makes him dance before finally putting him to the test: if he can help plot a worthy murder with her then she will bring Ripley back. We enter a film within a film as Ehrenreich plays a far more sleek American preying on a wealthy heiress (Olivia Cooke) in Rome, a character he concocts based on a woman he met on the train journey to meet Highsmith. After bumping into the real woman once again, we also follow his real efforts to romance her.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
