Drawing on a rich archive of diaries, journals, and private photos, Loving Highsmith paints an illuminating and unusually personal portrait of the much-filmed thriller writer Patricia Highsmith. Backed by Swiss television, director Eva Vitija’s impressively thorough documentary delves into the late American author’s boozy, sexually rapacious, emotionally volatile private life, putting maximum emphasis on her status as a trailblazing queer icon who published a risqué lesbian romance novel – The Price of Salt, aka Carol – under an alias in 1952.
After a handful of low-key festival showings, it makes perfect sense that this formally conventional but well-crafted film should screen in Locarno this week, the picturesque lakeside town close to where Highsmith spent her final years, dying at the local hospital in 1995. Given her enduring literary and cinematic profile, and her status as an LGBT icon, more festival slots are guaranteed, with interest likely from both big and small screen outlets. Indeed, Kino Lorber and Zeitgeist Films have already signed up North American rights.
Highsmith’s books have inspired more than a dozen films, from Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) to Todd Haynes’ Carol (2015) to Adrian Lyne’s Deep Water (2022). But of course, her most enduringly infamous literary creation remains the suavely amoral serial killer Tom Ripley, who has been immortalised in a string of movie classics including Plein Soleil (1960), The American Friend (1977) and The Talented Mister Ripley (1997). Soon to be seen on screen again in a Showtime TV series, Ripley has been widely interpreted as Highsmith’s fictionalised alter ego, which she appears to confirm in extracted quotes here, describing cinema’s most celebrated sociopath as “rather shy and a little bit homosexual.” Vitija peppers her documentary with sparing clips from these films, mainly to accentuate the parallels with the writer’s inner life and private confessions.
A more obvious and straight (no pun intended) film would have approached Highsmith through her cultural legacy, with input from writers and publishers, actors and film-makers. Vitija takes a more personal approach, resourcefully tracking down the author’s surviving family in Texas, plus a handful of her vast army of ex-lovers scattered from the US to Berlin, Paris and London. A surprisingly cheery bunch of Highsmith’s younger relatives recall how she grew up around ranches and rodeos, a tomboyish misfit who was clearly was not cut out for a prim Texan housewife lifestyle. They also confirm her woundingly fractious relationship with her callous mother, who freely admitted she tried to abort her baby girl by drinking turpentine, and then spent years trying to force her into a hetero-normative life of men and marriage.
Among Highsmith’s old flames, American author Marijane Meaker stands out as frank and sharp-witted, sharing her vivid recollections of New York City’s clandestine lesbian bar scene in the 1950s. The pair fell in love and moved to rural Pennsylvania, playing at domestic bliss with five cats. But Meaker’s angry temper and Highsmith’s alcohol abuse – she would start each morning with a large glass of gin and orange for breakfast – eventually drove them apart.
Vijita also meets later lovers from the author’s long decades in Europe, notably wry Parisian Monique Buffet. “She had a staggering number of conquests,” Buffet laughs, “her own festival of women.” Another ex who broke Highsmith’s heart, German artist and performer Tabea Blumenschein, who died before this film was finished, shares some colourful memories here of the pair bumping into David Bowie as they trawled Berlin’s transvestite bars and drag clubs in the late 1970s. Vijita’s sleuthing also led her to the married British woman who Highsmith fell hard for, even moving to England to conduct their tortuous secret affair. But because the woman passed away before they could meet, the director respectfully keeps her identity secret with blurred photos and pseudonymous names.
Vitija says she began this project as a fan of Highsmith’s books and feted film adaptations. But following a deep dive into her diaries, she claims, “I fell in love with Patrica Highsmith herself.” Whether literal truth or poetic metaphor, this is a perfectly valid motive to make a documentary, but fawning fan-worship sits uneasily with objective journalism. The director certainly glosses over Highsmith’s prickly autumnal years, increasingly bitter and poisoned by antisemitism, a little too glibly.
A wistful, off-key, guitar-twanging score by Noël Akchoté flows through Loving Highsmith, the nagging dissonance perhaps intended to symbolise the ever-present thread of unease that ran thorough the author’s life. Interwoven with archive audio and video clips of the real Highsmith are voice-over quotes from her private writing spoken by Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones, Star Wars, The Sandman), who gives these sardonic words a light sprinkle of world-weary ennui. There is dry wit here: kissing men, Highsmith writes, is like “falling into a bucket of oysters,” while her rare sexual encounters with male lovers feel “like steel wool in the face.” But there is also a steady throb of aching melancholy and thwarted desire running through this story. Gazing forwards to her long European exile, she predicts: “I shall have friends beyond number, and I will still be lonely, as I am now.”
Venue: Locarno Film Festival (Swiss Panorama)
Cast: Gwendoline Christie, Marijane Meaker, Monique Buffet, Tabea Blumenschein
Director, screenwriter: Eva Vitija
Producers: Franziska Sonder, Maurizius Staerkle Drux, Carl-Ludwig Rettinger
Cinematography: Siri Klug
Editing: Rebecca Trösch
Music: Noël Akchoté
Production companies: Ensemble Film (Switzerland), Lichtblick Film (Germany)
World sales: Autlook Filmsales, Vienna
In English, French, German
85 minutes
