Not quite Ripley, believe it or not
The Two Faces of January Rating: Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, Oscar Isaac Directed by: Hossein Amini Running time: 96 minutes
Though not as talented or as sophisticated as Mr. Ripley, there’s still enough substance and period style to the Two Faces of January, Hossein Amini’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel about a sexy but mysterious couple on holiday in Greece during the early 1960s.
Kirsten Dunst and Viggo Mortensen star as Collette and Chester MacFarland, two welldressed bon vivants who appear to be the very model of U.S. success, at least to Rydal (Oscar Isaac), a young student working as a tour guide at the Acropolis.
Rydal spots the two of them looking glamorous and handsome amid the ruins. He’s intrigued, and when he spies Collette at the market the next day, he starts up a suave conversation. After all, Collette is closer to his age, but she’s married to this older man who seems a little distracted by his leather suitcase.
By the time we discover what’s inside the luggage, and why Collette and Chester are roaming around Europe in short bursts, Rydal is deeply engrossed in their questionable narrative and finds himself forced into a tense road trip serving as guide and translator.
The chemistry between the three leads is the engine on this travelogue and they kindle an interesting flame with their three tongues, each lapping at a slightly different angle.
Chester is a money man before his time — a seminal version of the Wall Street pyramid builder who makes his living selling an image, an investment, a makebelieve portal to the good life.
Rydal is the undiscovered writer seeking his Hemingway side, only a few decades late for the romance of a civil war and a few years too early to qualify as boho hippie. And Collette is the object of desire, pulling the two men ever closer as they joust for position.
Amini creates a seductive period look to the film, shot largely on location in Europe under hot yellow sun and surrounded by turquoise seas.
His palette has the muted look of old Kodak stock that’s been sitting in the basement alongside old Christmas decorations, and that’s what spins such a thick mood.
Every scrap of imagery casts a little spell, whether it’s Viggo Mortensen’s chiselled face behind a pair of vintage RayBans, or Isaac’s straw fedora and peg-legged trousers.
Amini successfully transports us to a different place and time when international travel still felt exotic and fraud still felt personal. The nostalgia is drenched in sexiness, and that simmering sense of desire helps the movie chug forward, albeit in stops and starts.
Where The Talented Mr. Ripley (another Highsmith book, made into a 1999 movie with Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow) felt like an accelerated slide into a coal furnace, this one feels like an extended cat-andmouse chase across the Aegean. Amini keeps things on a slow burn, which keeps the movie in motion, but fails to hold us rapt.
Mortensen, Dunst and Isaac create internal combustion, but the emotional energy is never fully refined. The complex strands that bind them are suggested, but never really felt, and as a result the drama never achieves full power.