Monday, November 12, 2012

The Two Faces of January

This Patricia Highsmith novel from 1964 revolves around two men and a woman, Americans in Europe, engaging in some murderous cat-and-mouse. The two men mirror one another, both in their amorality, and their attraction to the central figure of Colette. The book begins in Athens, moves to Crete, and winds up in Paris, and despite all these juicy pieces of the plot, the book was pretty slow-going, none of the characters ever coming off the page in any significant way. I found myself speeding through to the finish, anxious to get it over with.

It's being turned into a movie, starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, and the soon-to-be-famous (and deservedly so) Oscar Isaac. A still has been released (see below). It's being directed by Hossein Amini, screenwriter of one of my favorites, The Wings of the Dove, so I have high hopes. It's very possible that the book will condense nicely into a two-hour film.


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