Patricia Highsmith

The story of the life, loves and work of US writer Patricia Highsmith (1921-95), told through her unpublished diaries, her own voice and that of those who knew her, both family and close friends.

Vic and Melinda Van Allen are a couple in the small town of Little Wesley. Their loveless marriage is held together only by a precarious arrangement whereby, in order to avoid the messiness of divorce, Melinda is allowed to take any number of lovers as long as she does not desert her family.

In 1960s New York, Walter Stackhouse is a rich, successful architect and unhappily married to the beautiful but damaged Clara. His desire to be free of her feeds his obsession with Kimmel, a man suspected of brutally murdering his own wife. When Walter and Kimmel's lives become dangerously intertwined, a ruthless police detective becomes convinced he has found the murderer. But as the lines blur between innocence and intent, who, in fact, is the real killer?

In 1950s New York, a department-store clerk who dreams of a better life falls for an older, married woman.

Patricia Highsmith's haunting story of a day in a young girl's life when a kind stranger comes to town.

1962. A con artist, his wife, and a dangerous stranger are caught up in the murder of a private detective and are forced to try and escape Athens.

A young woman becomes inexplicably attracted to a man who is stalking her. When her boyfriend goes missing, the stalker is the immediate suspect, until a game of jealousy and betrayal turns deadly.

After his friend, a hot young artist, is killed, a resourceful American man living in London covers up the crime and tries to keep the friend's name alive in order to exploit his legacy and reap millions in the process.

Tom Ripley - cool, urbane, wealthy, and murderous - lives in a villa in the Veneto with Luisa, his harpsichord-playing girlfriend. A former business associate from Berlin's underworld pays a call asking Ripley's help in killing a rival. Ripley - ever a student of human nature - initiates a game to turn a mild and innocent local picture framer into a hit man. The artisan, Jonathan Trevanny, who's dying of cancer, has a wife, young son, and little to leave them. If Ripley draws Jonathan into the game, can Ripley maintain control? Does it stop at one killing? What if Ripley develops a conscience?

Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Opportunity knocks in the form of a wealthy U.S. shipbuilder who hires Tom to travel to Italy to bring back his playboy son, Dickie. Ripley worms his way into the idyllic lives of Dickie and his girlfriend, plunging into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder.

This television remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train" (1951) follows the same story, but has changed the genders of the lead characters from male to female. Sheila Gaines is a former child star whose first husband is unwilling to give her a divorce. A chance meeting with Margo Anthony on a train leads to a conversation where the mentally unstable Margo, who hates her mother, suggests that they swap murders, so as to solve their problems. Although she thinks nothing of the conversation, Sheila's life takes a surprising turn when her husband is murdered by Margo. Now Margo wants Sheila to do her part of "the deal." With the police on her tail and Margo constantly in her face, Sheila must find a way out of this tangled web.

Though very polite and British, this feature-length documentary about German filmmaker Wim Wenders offers the most penetrating insights and the best overall critique of his work that I have encountered anywhere. Paul Joyce, who directed it, has also made documentaries about Nicolas Roeg, David Cronenberg, Nagisa Oshima, and Dennis Hopper, and he knows the conventional format well enough to get the most out of it. There are good clips and interesting commentaries from the interviewed subjects, who include Wenders himself, cinematographer Robby Muller, filmmaker Sam Fuller, novelist Patricia Highsmith, musician Ry Cooder, actors Harry Dean Stanton, Peter Falk, and Hanns Zischler, and critic Kraft Wetzel, who is especially provocative. A must-see for Wenders fans, highly recommended for everyone else. –Jonathan Rosenbaum, 1989

In this mystery/thriller based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, Nico Thomkins (Udo Schenk), a writer, and his wife Helen (Anke Sevenich) are in the habit of playing games with one another. Even while they are breaking up, they are sufficiently in tune with one another to continue this practice. When the writer's wife takes off without leaving a note behind, people begin to suspect that he may have murdered her, and he plays along with this notion to the point of planting clues which would incriminate him. Obviously, no one with a shred of common sense would do such a thing, and these tricks get him into trouble. However, his troubles don't really begin until he starts to search for her in earnest.

Robert is an architect and artist, in Vichy after separating from his Parisian wife. Robert finds it calms him to stand in the shadows of the home of Juliette and Patrick and watch her cook. She thinks he's a prowler and confronts him, then invites him in...

Edith runs a left-wing journal and when her marriage starts to fall apart (her husband is unfaithful), she can find no solace in her son who is more of a problem than an asset. On top of heading toward a divorce and being unable to handle her son's asocial tendencies, her neurotic uncle moves in, demanding personalized care. Just to keep her sanity intact, Edith starts writing in her diary to vent her own feelings and ambitions. As her son goes from bad to worse over a five-year period, it turns out that Edith's diary may be of more benefit than she could have ever imagined. In this adaptation of Edith's Diary by Patricia Highsmith, director and writer Hans W. Geissendoerfer has maintained Highsmith's psychologically tormented characters while changing the location and time of her story from the U.S. of the 1960s to Germany in the early 1980s.

On the island of Jersey, off the French coast, Mélanie, a beautiful woman gifted with a captivating personality, enjoys having unimportant love affairs that her husband Victor, a perfumer older than her, seems to endure with total indifference.

A man is wrongfully imprisoned for five years. Once out, he hears about his wife's supposed adventures outside of their marriage and becomes increasingly jealous.

Industrious accountant David Martinaud claims to be visiting his parents every weekend, but it's merely a cover for the labor-intensive refurbishing of his country cottage. The reason for David's secrecy is that his childhood crush, Lise, lives nearby, and, although she's married, he still believes they'll get together. His devotion to the idea borders on mania, and, when Lise's husband is accidentally killed, he quickly spirals out of control.

Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.

Jerry, a Southern California golf pro is the target for Diana a disturbed young woman who desires the death of her shrink, who alone realizes her psychotic potential and seeks to have her committed. She suggests to Jerry that they "swap" murders - she'll kill his golf rival and he'll reciprocate by killing her psychiatrist. When she holds up her half of the bargain, she expects him to follow through with his end.

Two total strangers suspect each other of murdering their own wives.

Tom Ripley is a talented mimic, moocher, forger and all-around criminal improviser; but there's more to Tom Ripley than even he can guess.

A deranged socialite accosts a tennis star with his theory that if two strangers trade murders, they can disguise their motives and avoid suspicion.