230. Loving Highsmith; movie review

 

LOVING HIGHSMITH

Cert 12A

84 mins

BBFC advice: Contains discrimination, moderate violence, nudity, language, sex references

Who wrote Hitchcock's thrilling Strangers on A Train and was the author behind The Talented Mr Ripley?

I am embarrassed to admit that I didn't know it was Patricia Highsmith, a writer who, I have now learned, was held in the highest esteem.

Many years after penning the controversial lesbian book Carol, Highsmith also revealed that she had published it, fearing retribution, under a nom de plume.

Eva Vitija's Loving Highsmith attempts to understand the reclusive Texan by following her travels across the world.

It combines current contributions from those who knew her, including many of her lovers, with a narrative chronicling her life alongside contemporaneous TV interviews with her.

It traces Highsmith's deeply complex character back to her childhood and a mother who abandoned her as a small girl and then took her back years later.

For years, she tried, without success, to gain her approval before finally realising that it would never come.

In interviews, Highsmith is consistently asked whether she is happy, presumably because she so rarely smiles.

Vitija goes a long way towards explaining her complicated emotional state, delving deep into the writer's psyche.

However, I felt I could have done with knowing a little bit more about her work and how she managed to be so successful in an arena dominated by men.

Thus, the documentary was interesting without ever being arresting.

Reasons to watch: Deep delve into the life of reclusive author

Reasons to avoid: Doesn't go into much into her writing

Laughs: None

Jumps: None

Vomit: None

Nudity: Yes

Overall rating: 7.5/10

Did you know? After graduating from Barnard College, a private women’s college in New York City in 1942, Highsmith applied to publications such as Vogue, Fortune, Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, TIME, and The New Yorker but was rejected.

The final word. Eva Vitija: "I wasn’t a huge Highsmith fan, when I went to the Swiss Literary Archives to read her unpublished notebooks, I was really pulled in. (The work in the archives) revealed such a different person and was also very different from the novel writing that she did. It really fascinated me, this private text." Filmmaker

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