Key Highlights
- Helen Mirren delivers a “deranged delight” as Patricia Highsmith in A Talent For Murder, opening in theaters October 23 after its Toronto International Film Festival premiere.
- The film, directed by Anton Corbijn and adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith from her play Switzerland, imagines a fictional 1995 encounter between the reclusive author and an ambitious young fan, Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich).
- Co-starring Olivia Cooke as heiress Clementine and Juliet Stevenson as a miserly aunt, the thriller blends Highsmith’s signature themes of sex, deception, and murder with meta-commentary on her creative process.
A Literary Thriller Comes to Life
Patricia Highsmith’s shadow looms large over cinema. From Carol and Deep Water to Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, her “lurid tales of sex, deception, and murder” have inspired filmmakers for decades. Now, with A Talent For Murder, the author herself steps into the frame as a character in the very genre she defined. Adapted for the screen by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith from her own stage play Switzerland, the film posits a tantalizing what-if: what happens when Highsmith’s biggest fan secures a meeting with his idol?
The setup unfolds on a train cutting through the Swiss Alps—a deliberate nod to Strangers on a Train. Edward Ridgeway (Tony winner Alden Ehrenreich) cuts a figure seemingly ripped from a Ripley novel’s opening chapter: “a handsome young man with carefully coiffed dark hair, a strong jaw, a pressed shirt, and polished glasses, but little poise.” Opposite him sits Clementine Harriet Balfour (Olivia Cooke), “pretty, with a bouncy brunette bob, and a fashion sense that hints at an old-money family and independent ambitions.” Their meeting in a small Swiss village—where she visits a miserly dowager aunt (Juliet Stevenson) and he carries a contract for a sixth Ripley novel—springs a trap that director Anton Corbijn loads with glittering promise. “A handsome couple flirts, while wealth and opportunity glitter on the horizon. What might they do to get there?”
Mirren’s Commanding Performance as Highsmith
Enter Helen Mirren. The English Dame has traversed Shakespeare, Prime Suspect, Queen Elizabeth II, a Fast and Furious villain, and most recently a sultry spy in The Thursday Murder Club. But her Highsmith carries “no lightness.” Set in 1995 atop a Swiss mountain, this version of the heralded author has curdled into an eccentric recluse, dogged by rumors she “poisoned a neighbor’s dog for barking too much, and to have driven an American man so mad he fled her home while only wearing his pajamas.”
Costumed in “men’s slacks, a crisp men’s dress shirt, a cravat and vest, paired with a fuck-off bob,” Mirren’s Highsmith imposes herself immediately—introduced ironing a shirt. When Edward arrives eager with compliments, gifts, and talk of opportunity, “she regards him with such scorching disdain the audience at the Toronto International Film Festival gasped and guffawed.” The screenplay replicates “the ruthless wit of the Ripley novels,” and Mirren “makes the most of every line, savoring the sharp barbs.” Her performance channels a “snarling cruelty” reminiscent of Tilda Swinton in Problemista—delicious in its precision.
Ehrenreich’s Slippery Anti-Hero
Ehrenreich, fresh off a Tony-winning Broadway turn in Becky Shaw, proves an ideal foil. His Edward shares DNA with that stage character: “Young men who’ve come from a family with no means and no reputation worth a damn, who both cozy up to a wealthy family, determined not just to enter their world but to rule it.” Visually, he echoes Matt Damon’s Ripley from the 1999 adaptation—”His hair floppy but fashionable. His smile earnest but awkward. The eyeglasses, a perfect twin.” This mirroring feels intentional, prodding Highsmith fans to wonder whether this eager climber harbors “the root of evil.”
Smartly, the script avoids painting Edward as a rube. He arrives prepared to impress, even “tantalizing her with twisted tales from his past, and the possibility of criminally corrupting him.” Enticed, Highsmith collaborates with him on a murder mystery about a blue-collar boy seducing an old-money girl to seize her family’s fortune. Their thought experiment bleeds into reality as Highsmith haunts his nights and steers him toward treating the reckless Clementine as source material. From there, the film “blurs what’s real and imagined in pursuit of bringing fresh blood to Highsmith’s typewriter.”
A Trio of Twisted Desires
Ehrenreich burns on two registers. As Edward, he “trembles with insecurity, particularly in a scene where he’s delicately called out by an Irish lady (Brid Brennan), who spots him as an outsider from his shoes alone.” In the imagined novel sequences, he acquires “the smoothness of Ripley, his confidence edged with a misanthropic disgust at all who aren’t as clever and calculating as he.” Cooke, despite a slimmer role, refuses to be outshone—whether playing “a yearning virgin” in the manuscript or “a spoiled rich girl looking for a cheap thrill” in reality, she brings “a full-blooded verve to this girl.”
Together, the trio weaves “a tale of sex, death, and desire that touches on the best of Highsmith’s works, without feeling like a shallow retread of them.” The film plays “like a superb fan fiction, imagining the inner world and grisly desires of the seminal author, without idolizing her or whitewashing her well-documented defects.” As the review concludes: “A Talent For Murder is darkly funny, freshly thrilling, and unrepentantly seductive. It’s not a Ripley sequel, but it’s damn close.“
Why This Matters
A Talent For Murder arrives at a fertile moment for Highsmith adaptations. The author’s work has sustained a remarkable cinematic afterlife—from Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) and Clément’s Purple Noon (1960) to Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Haynes’s Carol (2015), and the recent Showtime series Ripley (2024). Corbijn, a photographer-turned-filmmaker known for Control (2007), The American (2010), and Life (2015), brings a visual rigor suited to Highsmith’s precise, unsettling prose. Murray-Smith’s adaptation of her own play ensures theatrical tension translates to screen. The TIFF premiere positions the film for awards-season conversation, particularly for Mirren—already an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony winner—whose transformation into the misanthropic genius could earn her another nomination. The October 23 theatrical release counters streaming saturation, betting on adult audiences craving literary thrillers.
Frequently Asked Questions
- When and where can I watch A Talent For Murder?
- The film opens in theaters on October 23, 2025, following its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
- Is this a sequel to The Talented Mr. Ripley or the Ripley series?
- No. The film is an original meta-fiction imagining a 1995 encounter between Patricia Highsmith (Helen Mirren) and a fictional aspiring writer, Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich). It engages with Highsmith’s themes and the Ripley mythology but does not continue Tom Ripley’s story.
- Who wrote and directed the film?
- Anton Corbijn directed from a screenplay by Joanna Murray-Smith, adapted from her own play Switzerland.
