A Talent for Murder has an irresistible premise and three strong performances from appealing performers. But the execution falters, and the film adds up to little. Directed by Anton Corbijn, the Dutch photographer-turned-music-video-director-turned-filmmaker who made a documentary a few years ago called Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis), A Talent for Murder is based on a play called Switzerland, based on a fictitious episode from mystery author Patricia Highsmith. Joanna Murray-Smith wrote the play and also wrote the film’s screenplay.
Movies have adapted Highsmith’s work widely, from Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train in 1951 to various adaptations of her Tom Ripley character, most famously The Talented Mr. Ripley, with Matt Damon, in 1999. A very good Ripley series came to Netflix not long ago, with Andrew Scott in the title role. In A Talent for Murder, presumably set in the 1990s, Highsmith is an older recluse, living in Switzerland, and is played by Helen Mirren in a wig that makes her look more like Fran Liebowitz than Highsmith.
Edward (Alden Ehrenreich), a junior agent at her publishing house, visits her, sent by Highsmith’s publisher to persuade her to write another cash-cow Ripley book, an approach she angrily refuses, though the two soon start working out ideas. On the way in, Edward meets a stranger on the train, a rich girl named Clementine Balfour (Olivia Cooke).
The film’s conceit works like this: We go back and forth between the “real” story, of Edward seeming to court Clementine, and the fictional novel Edward’s pitching, also featuring versions of those two characters, only in a more sinister, murderous tone.
Edward, in both versions, is something of a Ripley-like character: a striver looking to break into the upper class, though he may or may not be like Ripley in other ways (gay, and a murderer). This setup is fascinating, but the film never does anything interesting with it. The back-and-forth between the two versions of the characters doesn’t work, and the ending is unsatisfying. The film also doesn’t offer anything new about Patricia Highsmith or her work.
It’s a shame, though, because the performances are good. Mirren capably disappears into the role, while Ehrenreich, whose career was derailed for years by one bad Star Wars movie, delivers a strong performance, living up to the tradition of many top actors who’ve played versions of Ripley before. And Olivia Cooke (from House of the Dragon), as always, is good as the alluring rich girl.