Iconic Oscar Winner, 81, Becomes a Diabolical Villain

Bleecker Street Helen Mirren may be a beloved dame, but she’s having quite a diabolical autumn courtesy of this weekend’s second season of MobLand and, now, A Talent for Murder .

Playing a fictionalized version of legendary crime author Patricia Highsmith, the Oscar-winning star scowls, schemes, and slices necks (or does she?) in Anton Corbijn’s playful adaptation of Joanna Murray-Smith’s 2014 play Switzerland , which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival ahead of its Oct.

23 theatrical release.

An antisocial recluse whose ill temper is born from both her distaste for people and her nagging writer’s block, she’s an artist of cagey lethality, and the actress’ performance is the acrimonious engine that powers this clever game of cat and mouse.

Entrenched in her Swiss home, taunted by the blank page in her typewriter, Patricia cuts a mean figure.

With brown bangs and in a button-down shirt, trousers, and a vest, she’s severeness incarnate.

Expectedly, she’s none too pleased with the arrival of Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich), the latest employee from her publisher to visit in the hopes of having her sign a contract for a sixth novel featuring her chameleon-like con man, Tom Ripley.

Patricia has no interest in this deal or in revisiting her most iconic character, and she greets Edward nastily, all while announcing that she has no moral compass and (with across-the-board intolerance) that she fled New York City to escape its “dregs.” Patricia attempts to cast this interloper out of her house, but he manages to extend his stay through a mixture of flattery (praising Ripley as “the most beguilingly evil villain in literature”) and boldness, as he claims to know her work better than anyone alive and can help her complete a new Ripley book.

Patricia naturally scoffs at this idea, proving far more interested in the goods he’s brought her: notepads, cans of soup, and, most enticingly, a gleaming French knife that she adds to her study wall’s collection of weapons.

Mirren sneers, snipes, and shuffles about as the haughty and misanthropic Patricia, praising misery and anxiety as emotions far more valuable than happiness, and badmouthing Edward for his timidity.

Even so, he convinces her to let him stay the night, and later, he notices that carved into his bedframe are the initials of a coworker who went missing after visiting her—suggesting that Patricia and Ripley might be more alike than anyone suspects.

Murray-Smith’s script moves at such a fast clip, however, that it’s not long before all sorts of potentially nefarious intimations pile up, including an introductory moment which insinuates that there’s more to this set-up than meets the eye.