Anton Corbijn's first fiction feature in over a decade also stars Alden Ehrenreich as a quasi-Ripley figure trying to coax one last book out of the reclusive battle-ax author.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
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Courtesy of TIFF We’ve grown so used to seeing Helen Mirren imperiously slumming her way through boilerplate grande dame roles in recent years that it’s a genuine thrill to see the actress bare her teeth in “A Talent for Murder” — playing no less compromising a character than Patricia Highsmith, embodied here as a woman every bit as vicious and cold-blooded as her celebrated crime novels. That may be close to the truth — Highsmith was famously a hardass, to use a kinder term than many would — but Anton Corbijn‘s film is wholly fictional: a playful metatextual literary noir in which the author is both storyteller and villain, pitted against a young publishing agent who’s also a slippery proxy for Tom Ripley, her most famous creation.
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