The Two Faces of January (Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst)

[Holmes]

I could not find a thread for this film in this section.

In the United States, it is available on demand now. A theatrical release comes in late September.

My review -

This is the directorial debut of Hossein Amini, the Iranian-born British screenwriter of such celebrated literary adaptations as The Wings of the Dove and Drive. (He also contributed to rather more coldly remembered pictures, including Snow White and the Huntsman and 47 Ronin, but let us not focus on this.) Here, he adapts The Two Faces of January, a 1964 novel by the late Patricia Highsmith, a novelist whose macabre stories and unusual personal life continue to fascinate readers worldwide. Oscar Isaac portrays Rydal, an American living abroad in Greece, earning his living as a charismatic tour guide and small-time confidence artist. He becomes acquainted with Chester (Viggo Mortensen), a wealthy man on holiday with his beautiful wife, Colette (Kirsten Dunst). Chester, however, has a past: he earned his fortune swindling investors with a story of a nonexistent oil field. His past catches up with him in the form of a gun-toting private investigator. After a violent late-night encounter with the private eye, Chester and his wife find themselves on the run in a foreign land they do not know. Rydal decides to help them, though he does not understand at first the complex and dangerous ramifications of his choice.

This is an old-fashioned and slowly burning suspense film, elegant and involving. The locations throughout both urban and rural Greece lend themselves to sumptuous photography, and the period sixties costuming is eye-catching. The performances, too, are strong, which is not a surprise considering the caliber of the cast. Mortensen is among the finest actors of his generation, able to rivet and convey the depth of a moment, of a feeling, with a single glance or gesture. His character in this film is a deceitful man trying to disguise his increasing desperation behind a veil of practiced suavity. He is matched and complemented by Isaac, who also maintains a pleasant and teasing ambiguity: as played by the rising star, his character seems to be at once earnestly in over his head and craftily weighing his options. Dunst's role is not as nuanced, though she achieves a Grace Kelly-esque glamor.

Overall, the film falls a couple levels short of the twisting, turning, and creepily sensual resonance of arguably the finest Highsmith adaptation, the 1999 version of The Talented Mr. Ripley which transformed Jude Law into an international star. Still, moment for moment, Amini's picture pleases the senses and engages the mind, and it is an undeniable treat to see Mortensen and Isaac circle one another, lying and toying and ultimately angling for the jugular.

B+