Review: 'A Talent For Murder' brings Helen Mirren as a crafty novelist together with Alden Ehrenreich as a devious underling for clever gamesmanship

The key thing to know about “A Talent for Murder” is that Helen Mirren plays the famed author Patricia Highsmith, but it’s not a biopic — but instead a completely invented thriller in which the writer of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” matches wits with a Ripley-like figure in a conflict over her life and legacy.

Set in 1995, the movie finds Highsmith alone in her home in Switzerland, smoking cigarettes, drinking scotch and dismissive of humanity in general — and, in particular, of Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich), who has come from her New York publisher eager to get her to sign a contract to write a sixth book in her “Ripley” series.

Highsmith has no interest in revisiting her social-climbing sociopath, no matter how fat a contract she’s offered. Ridgeway appeals to her vanity, telling her he knows more about Highsmith’s books than anyone other than herself — and that he could give her a premise for another Ripley book, something interesting enough that she would want to finish it.

What Ridgeway suggests is that Ripley meets a beautiful American heiress, and devises how to marry her and klll off the relatives standing between her and her inheritance. The heiress bears the same name, Clementine Balfour, and likeness as the young woman (Olivia Cooke) Ridgeway met on the train to Switzerland. 

This resemblance between Ridgeway’s story and Ripley’s allows director Anton Corbijn (“The American”) and screenwriter Joanna Murray-Smith (adapting her play “Switzerland”) to blur the lines between parallel narratives — and to show how Ripley’s influence, and Highsmith’s needling, could change how Ridgeway goes about wooing the “real” Clementine.

The twin connections between Ehrenreich and Cooke make for some steamy scenes, but the real explosive chemistry is between Mirren’s Highsmith and Ehrenreich — as both Ridgeway and Ripley. The movie makes us consider how much control Highsmith has over her elusive Ripley, until you realize this is Highsmith and this is Mirren, and control is something neither woman is likely to give up. 

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‘A Talent for Murder’

★★★

Opens Friday, October 23, in theaters. Rated R for sexual content, some violence and language. Running time: 106 minutes.