This film promises to be a real treat. The two stars, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, have already received plaudits for their performances. The film is directed by Todd Haynes, one of the most talented filmmakers working in the USA. His Far From Heaven (2002) was a memorable and intelligent re-visiting of a classic by Douglas Sirk. And the film is adapted from a novel by Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt (1952). Highsmith is an enjoyable and stimulating writer. Her novels are replete with a real sense of irony. Moreover, her novels adapt so well to the other media. The BBC offered a series of fine radio adaptations of her five Ripley novels in 2009 and repeated these in 2014. Then there are the films – all the ones I have seen have been good but the outstanding ones are probably The American Friend (Der amerikanische Freund 1977) directed by Wim Wenders and Strangers on a Train (1951) directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Haynes was quoted in the LIFF Catalogue where the film was the closing screenings,
“When we think of our love affairs, our most memorable ones are those that put you on the side of the weaker and desiring subject. Stories about marginal women are more interesting than films about men: they contain the limits of social burden: women’s lives are more burdened by society, in the choices they make, as they carry on the institutions of the family, satisfying men.”
This promises to be a real treat. It opens on Friday and is screening most days of the following week.
Friends of Hyde Park Picture House 