Chain-smoking, whiskey-sipping, people-hating – when we first see Patricia Highsmith (Helen Mirren) in her Alpine chalet in 1995, just a few months before her death, she is slumped so deeply in the armchair that it almost looks as if her neckless head is mounted directly on her shoulders. But it is her eyes – only small slits, but still sparkling with deception – that immediately make it clear that this author is not to be trifled with, even in her old age.
Oscar winner Helen Mirren (“The Queen”) embodies the psychological thriller pioneer Patricia Highsmith in “A Talent for Murder” with an infectious desire for the amoral and unfathomable. And if she can’t scare off the young editor Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich), whom her New York publisher has sent to Switzerland to get a sixth Ripley novel out of her, with her harsh, dismissive manner, then she just prepares him breakfast – and conspicuously leaves the arsenic next to the scrambled egg pan in the kitchen.
With Patricia Highsmith, Helen Mirren adds yet another iconic screen role to her filmography.
Based on the two-person play “Switzerland,” which premiered in 2014 by the Australian Joanna Murray-Smith, who also contributed the screenplay to the film adaptation, a cat-and-mouse psychological war between star author and junior agent ensues from the first knock in the mountain hut, which is equipped with a weapons cabinet and a collection of poisons. Alden Ehrenreich (“Solo: A Star Wars Story”) plays a double role as an uninvited guest, as the figure of the overwhelmed publishing delivery boy increasingly blurs with Highsmith’s most iconic creation – the charismatic, chameleon-like gentleman sociopath Tom Ripley.
In the most famous film adaptation – “The Talented Mr. Ripley” with Matt Damon from 1999 – Ripley represents everything that characterizes Highsmith: the desire for the stylishly cold-blooded, the fascination for the obsessive without a moral compass. “A Talent for Murder” leaves it up to the audience to decipher whether Edward, who is flirting with the American student Clementine Balfour (Olivia Cooke) on the train ride, is actually up to something sinister – or whether things are just getting mixed up in the author’s head.
Patricia Highsmith believes she can just chase her counterpart, Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich), away.
Even before his cinematic breakthrough with the Joy Division biography “Control”, the Dutchman Anton Corbijn shaped the look of an entire pop culture era as a photographer and music video director – and even if “A Talent for Murder” stands out from his filmography as comparatively “light-footed”, that does not detract from his unconditional style. Together with the two-time Oscar-nominated Yorgos Lanthimos cinematographer Robbie Ryan (“Poor Things”, “The Favourite”), Corbijn transforms the supposed vastness of the Swiss Alps into a claustrophobic chamber drama set that can send a chill down your spine when Edward wakes up in the morning with a bleeding cut on his neck, as if his hostess had scratched him with a particularly sharp French knife just for fun.
In contrast to the play, which is a classic chamber play that only takes place in the study, in the film we follow Ripley (also: Alden Ehrenreich) as he puts into practice the murderous machinations he conceived in a duel between author and agent. This also looks really good, especially because of the noir-typical but also pleasantly playful use of light and shadow. However, in the end, the convoluted crime plans in this fictional Ripley plot are nowhere near as elegantly and coolly calculated as if the real Patricia Highsmith herself had written a sixth novel about her favorite murderer. But probably no one could seriously expect that.
Conclusion: A deliciously amoral psychological duel against a breathtaking Alpine backdrop – the murderous details may not be quite as clever as a Highsmith original, but Helen Mirren throws herself into one of her darkest roles to date with infectious playfulness.
We saw “A Talent for Murder” at the Hamburg Film Festival 2026, where the film celebrated its German premiere.