Deceptions and Double Lives: The Two Faces of January (2014) Film Review
Film: Two Faces of January. Year: 2014. Genre: Crime/ Mystery/ Romance. Rating: PG-13. Director: Hossein Amini.
Based on the 1964 Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name, Hossein Amini’s rendition of The Two Faces Of January (2014) stays with the new and diverts from the old in the world of suspense. The dramatic, psychological thriller is set against the balmy, sun-soaked backdrop of 1960’s Greece, and viewers never know which character is more honest or sinister in this cat-and-mouse game.
The plot is simple and reminiscent of the American pulp thrillers of the 1950s and 60s: A married American couple bump into an American tour guide while on vacation in Athens, and a suspected murder brings them together if only to set them against each other soon afterwards. However, The Two Faces of January still delivers a quiet yet complex thriller with characters whose intentions we keep questioning.
It isn’t the simple plot that makes us want to settle and swim in the warm, turquoise waters of the Mediterranean. What really breathes new life into this film is Hossein Amini’s stylistic approach to the genre, and it isn’t a bad thing to cast actors who resemble and compliment Highsmith’s characters in unexpected ways.
First thing’s first, when it comes to adapting popular novels to the screen, it never hurts to have to draw from the material of a Patricia Highsmith novel. She was, after all, the woman who wrote The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers On A Train. The former’s film adaptation in 1999 brought to the screen the talents of a young Jude Law, who sported a full head of blonde-tipped hair, the always innocent-looking Gwyneth Paltrow, and an awkwardly charming but pasty Matt Damon. While the latter novel attracted Alfred Hitchcock to adapt in 1951.
In many of Highsmith’s novels, there seems to be a deep, thematic recurrence with deception, identity, and obsession, and Amini’s adaptation is no exception. Rydal Keener (Oscar Isaac) is a young American who takes up a job as a tour guide in Athens, tucking his head down in suspected shame from a sordid, rarely explored past with his family. When he catches a glimpse of a man, Chester MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen), who looks just like his deceased father, an obsession quickly begins. Chester and his wife, Colette (Kirsten Dunst), are vacationing in Greece and have no idea the extent to the young man’s obsession.
“What are you doing here?” Colette asks Rydal about his stay in Greece, after finding out he’s from America.
“I’m a tour guide,” he tells her with an achingly wide smile, as they wait in line to use a restroom at a café. “You need one?”
Rydal plays the tour guide role well in front of the chipper Americans. Quickly, he befriends them with his charming smile and seemingly unlimited knowledge in all things Greek. However, it seems that a twist of fate, in the form of a lost bracelet and the death of a private investigator at the hotel the couple are staying at, binds the trio together. This attempts to shatter all their veneers.
The acting throughout is superb. In each of their scenes, the three leads deepen their characters with shades of delicacy, emphasising that there is always something, or perhaps someone else, lingering behind false identities, secrets, and chic sunglasses. Isaac injects a kind of intensity into Rydal that is reminiscent of his previous roles in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) and In Secret (2013), where his ability to convey layered emotions brings depth to the character. And as expected, Mortensen delivers a relaxed, measured performance that provides Chester with dimensions that go beyond the clichéd conman archetype which other actors would’ve lent the role. Dunst is more than adequate at elevating the problematic wife role given to her for the time she is onscreen, trading flirtatious smiles with Rydal and eye rolling at Chester to provide tension needed for this kind of dynamic.
But it is also Marcel Zyskind’s brilliant cinematography that compliments all of this. He captures the film’s noir mood. Each scene is meticulously shot with the intention of drawing us into the smallest details. Closeups of faces reveal facets of characters’ hidden depths. However, much like how tightly constructed Highsmith’s novels are, nothing is ever made explicit. Everything keeps us guessing.
Camera shots linger on Isaac’s dark-browed gaze as he stares at Colette’s blue eyes with longing. But he meets Chester’s rugged stare with the ill-tempered passion of a son combating his estranged father. The clever trick here is that none of his true feelings is particularly spoken aloud, except in crucial moments when characters come to blows.
Amini’s technical brilliance isn’t just limited to using visual language as a way to keep atmospheres heightened and viewers engaged within the comfortable wide shots of the Mediterranean. The film’s dialogue often works to hide things from us, too. Chester doesn’t speak a lick of Greek, and there are no subtitles throughout the film. Some characters mumble their first language as they speak too quickly. Other Greek speak is filtered through radios. For most of it, we are left as much in the dark as Chester and Colette are. Rydal acts as their translator the whole time, setting them up with fake IDs and leading them through unfamiliar Greek towns where they are as lost as any other tourist.
As the three protagonists travel from Athens to Crete and later Istanbul, layers of deception unravel, true secrets rarely come to light, intentions are only glimpsed, and confessions are merely cut short before untimely death. Yet this is what keeps us teetering on the edge, connecting so well with the worlds of Patricia Highsmith, in which nothing is ever as simple as it seems and everything we see is a psychological game.
But truthfully, no film is ever perfect. If there is anything in Amini’s constructed world that doesn’t impress the way it should, it is Colette who, despite Dunst’s admirable portrayal slightly beyond the problematic wife, seems less cooked onscreen than how she is depicted in the book. However, that isn’t to take away anything from the film’s aesthetic, which suits the psychological thriller so well.
If there is a final word to say, it is this: Amini’s skilfully shot film is hardly anything new to the genre, but in complimenting the original source material without stripping away from Highsmith’s legacy, the film feels right at home.
