The Two Faces of January.

Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short story writer that was best known for crime fiction and had many of her novels adapted for the cinema these included what was probable her best-known character Tom Ripley. To this end two of the story’s were adapted, the first, and to my mind the best, was in 1960 and starred Alain Delon, in his first mayor role, as Ripley in Rene Clement’s Plein Soleil. Another version of her 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley was made in 1999 by the late Anthony Minghella and featured Mat Damon and the 1974 novel Ripley’s Game was also adapted twice, first in 1977 by Wim Wenders as Der Amerikanische Freund starring Dennis Hopper as Ripley and then again in 2002 by Liliana Cavani (best known for The Night Porter 1974) with John Malkovich in the lead part.

 

Collette Macfarland.

The latest adaptation is based on a less well known 1964 novel which has the same name as this new movie The Two Faces of January (2014). Its directed by Hossein Amin whose first feature this is and normally would be better known as a screenwriter for films that include the award winning Drive (2011) and the 2013 Japanese-American fantasy action 47 Ronin.

 

Chester Macfarland.

The story is set in 1962; a rich and attractive couple are staying in one of Athens top hotels. While Chester Macfarland (Viggo Mortensen) and his younger wife Collette (Kirsten Dunst) are out taking in the sites they meet Rydal Keener (Oscar Isaac) an American, Greek speaking tour guide. Chester suspects that he is ‘scamming’ young female tourists while showing them around the city! Impressed by the couples obvious wealth, Rydal sees’ his chance of not only making some money from these American tourists but also he is attracted to Colette! But all is not what it seems when Rydal gets involved in moving an unconscious man who its claimed attacked Chester. With events taking an ever-sinister turn we are never sure who we can trust and the threesome end up in a battle of wits than can only lead to disaster.  

 

Rydal Keener.

Amin’s old-fashioned melodramatic thriller is unmistakably similar to Highsmith’s other adapted stories with its element of middle class criminality, its good-looking well-dressed protagonists and the classy Mediterranean locations. In this case DOP Marcel Zyskind takes us on glorious travelogue of Crete, Athens and Istanbul. All three of the leads in the film carry the story with some panache, although the film is a health hazard as pointed out by the BBFC when it warned that there are ‘scenes of smoking’ a warning that certainly does not underestimate the power of passive smoking!  You will probably notice in the credits Anthony Minghella has been thanked and his son Max was the Executive Producer of this pleasantly watchable film.

                                                                                                          

A Dangerous Method.

Brendan Kearney, never a man to shirk his responsibilities, hosted Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre 

Film Club where he did a grand job of introducing A Dangerous Method (2011), not an easy film to summarise. He informed us it was about the turbulent relationship between the pioneering psychiatrists Carl Yung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and an attractive but troubled young Russian woman Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) who drives a wedge between these two men and who indecently became one of the first female psychoanalysts. Set in Switzerland and Austria in the early part of the twentieth century this fact-based drama was based on Christopher Hamptons play The Talking Cure, which in turn had been based on John Kerr’s non-fictional book A Most Dangerous Method. Brendan explained that this was a departure from the horror film genre that director David Cronenberg was best known for. Although I would reason that it’s not too dissimilar from his other works in the fact that most of them, like this one, explore the depths of the human mind.

Sabina Spielrein

The movie starts in 1904 with a hysterical Spielrein being restrained in a speeding coach and horses on her way to a mental hospital just outside Zurich to be subjected to the ‘talking cure’ under the care of Carl Yung. During her treatment Yung falls under her spell awakening hidden desires.  Influenced by Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel), another analyst who has been sent to Yung for treatment, the married Jung embarks on a sado-masochistic affair with Spielrein. It’s this affair that compromises Jung’s friendship with his eminent colleague Freud.

Carl Yung and Sigmund Freud.

This intellectually challenging award winning film has an exceptional period feel and so beautifully shoot you could almost smell the lake. With some first class acting and a touch of underlying humour its verbosity does not distract from your enjoyment of this fine film. I believe we have witnessed a cinematic landmark where the splendid Keira Knightley graduates from being a good British actress to being a great British actress. Nothing in this film is a coincidence!

Otto Gross.

Good.

Adapted by John Wrathall from C.P. Taylor’s 1981 play, Good (2007) was directed by Brazilian filmmaker Vicente Amorim who substitutes Budapest for 1930’s Berlin. Viggo Mortensen plays a rather unexciting academic in pre-war Nazi Germany who is unexpectedly summoned to the German Chancellery and invited, on the strength of a novel he once wrote, to draft a paper setting out the case for euthanasia. Professor John Halder is a weak willed man who does too little too late when he ignores the political upheaval going on around him to the detriment of his Jewish friend Maurice (Jason Isaacs) who begs his help to travel to Paris to escape the approaching death camps. It’s pretty obvious where the films going when Halder joins the party and sleepwalks through the ranks of the SS. Mortensen is a strange actor, sometimes setting the screen alight as in Eastern Promises (2007) and the western Appaloosa (2008) but certainly not in this disengaging movie which leaves little or no impact on the viewer