Despite there being three or four screenings during the festival, there was a pretty big crowd in line to see The Two Faces of January — the theater ended up being about 2/3rds full.
I had first seen the trailer just before NOFF announced they were showing it, and had resigned myself to watching it on Netflix in a few months.
Needless to say, I was excited. I have loved Viggo Mortensen since A History of Violence, and the writers and producers are all talented people who I admire. That said, I was a little disappointed.
It’s the early 1960’s. The film starts with the very handsome Rydal leading a tour of young women through the Greek ruins. He’s a charming young American con artist, grifting privileged American girls out of their parents’ money by overcharging them during the exchange of foreign money.
He meets Chester McFarland and his wife Colette and runs the game on them — you can tell early on that Chester is allowing it, rather than fooled. We soon discover that Chester is also a con, but of a much higher level — he’s invested hundreds of peoples’ money into stocks that didn’t exist, and this “vacation” in Europe is actually an escape from his more criminally inclined victims.
A private investigator barges into Chester and Colette’s swanky hotel room, a struggle ensues, and Chester accidentally kills the man. As he’s moving the body down the hall back to the PI’s room, he runs into Rydal, returning a bracelet that Colette had left in the cab they’d shared. Rydal, thinking the PI is just unconscious, agrees to help Chester and Colette leave the hotel and obtain new passports so they can leave the country. For a price, of course.
They travel to a small town where they hope no one will notice them, waiting for Rydal’s friend to obtain and deliver the new passports for them. During the several days wait Chester begins drinking, heavily, and becomes jealous of Colette’s growing closeness with Rydal, further alienating them both and drawing them closer to each other.
So, this is where I have a problem: I never believed that Rydal was attracted to Colette. There was no chemistry between the actors. In fact, I kind of thought that Rydal was more interested in Chester, not necessarily romantically, but we learn of his daddy issues very early on (he didn’t attend his father’s recent funeral) and Chester is old enough to be his father.
And in the end it does end up being the relationship between the two men that’s more important and interesting than their fight over Colette, which ends in her death. Accidental, of course, which is another issue I had — Chester manages to accidentally kill two people in the course of a few days, yet when killing Rydal would actually make sense, he chooses not to.
I also don’t quite understand why either men would go through so much over Colette. She comes off as a young woman who married Chester because he was rich and could give her a life she’d only dreamed about. She’s not spectacularly beautiful, and seems kind of bratty and silly — your husband stole money from a gambling syndicate and you didn’t think they’d come after him? This handsome young man insists on helping you and your husband cover up a crime and you don’t think he might have ulterior motives towards you or the money? And then as soon as shit gets real, she’s ready to leave her husband and run off with Rydal.
The best part of the film, for me, was the cat and mouse game in the end where both men clearly want to destroy each other, but one getting arrested means the same fate for the other. Rydal can’t get through customs without Chester pretending to be his father; Chester slips him at the airport and books a flight to Istanbul instead of the agreed upon Frankfurt; Rydal is captured by the police and is given the task of getting a confession from Chester about Colette’s death, in exchange for his freedom. They both slip the police and the most tense scene in the film emerges — a foot chase through the streets of Istanbul.
I wasn’t sure who to root for. Chester is a con artist and an accidental killer, but Rydal ingratiated himself into the MacFarlands’ lives for the sake of money and a married woman. Somehow, they both seem culpable. Eventually Chester is shot and as he’s dying confesses into the wire that Rydal is wearing that he is responsible for Colette death, and not Rydal. Free to go, the last we see of Rydal is him visiting Chester’s grave. I think it would be exaggerating to say that the men loved each other, but they did realize each other’s value and in the end, Chester cared enough for Rydal to not let him go to jail for something he didn’t do.
As an added reason to see the film, Greece is gorgeously shot, so if you’re like me and have never been, this film might be worth it just for the beauty alone.
Recommendation: Netflix/Prime it if you have a big TV, catch a matinee if you don’t.
Originally published at denisejena.tumblr.com.
