Unlike many acclaimed novelists, the movies have done pretty well by Patricia Highsmith. Following Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1951 adaptation of her debut thriller Strangers on a Train, Highsmith’s most infamous anti-hero, Tom Ripley, has schemed through several high-class screen outings - Plein Soleil (1960), The American Friend (1977) and the late Anthony Minghella’s excellent The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), the first film to truly showcase Matt Damon’s range as vulnerable, needy yet ruthless sociopath.
There’s no Ripley in The Two Faces of January, one of Highsmith’s lesser-known books, but its mug looks mighty familiar. It’s another tale of duplicitous fraudsters playing perverted mind games that result in sudden bursts of desperate violence; flashy Americans with dirty little secrets swanning round Europe’s finest locations. Glamour is forgery. Seduction is treachery. The game is always rigged but somehow never lacking for willing players.
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