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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
For taking place 50+ years apart the film is surprisingly true to the book (especially in the sense that Melinda is so insufferable that it’s easy to root for psychopath Vic). As a marriage counselor once said to my parents: sometimes divorce is good for people!
This was just ok. In spite of living in the head of the ultra-nonchalant protagonist from start to finish, I didn’t find his moves explicable. And I suppose the whole fifties upperclass cocktail nation ambience left me cold.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
The ending was rushed and disappoints as a result, but the rest is a loving depiction of a sociopath who is at turns sympathetic (very quirky, tender with his daughter, refuses to tell his wife who and how to be) and terrifyingly cold. Overall, though, it's another example of why Highsmith's psychological thrillers are still praised today.
Solid 3 star review for me. All in all this was just a weird one and I struggled to get through it!
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I read this book after I had watched the film with Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas which was a decent psychological thriller. I had read a Patricia Highsmith novel about 20 years ago, and decided I would read the novel written in 1957 that was turned into a movie with a contemporary setting. I’m glad that I did because the book was also a decent psychological thriller with a different ending than the film.
This is one of the better Highsmith novels that I've read. It does what her best books do best, and that, to me, is to push a character through a series of often fairly mundane mystery or crime drama sequences until they start to really get under your skin. I hate to second guess the master's method, but it seems to me she dreams up these slightly off, edgy people and then just follows Heraclitus's maxim regarding character being the stuff of one's destiny until they fulfill themselves in something--a series of events, I guess--that comes to resemble a plot. It works for me.
Here we have Vic, a man who goes to great lengths not to be petty. Needless to say, pettiness catches up with him in a big, big way.
Here we have Vic, a man who goes to great lengths not to be petty. Needless to say, pettiness catches up with him in a big, big way.
dark
reflective
medium-paced