To watch The Two Faces of January is like plunging into a swimming pool. Spartan and luxurious, it fazes you with its clear chill and faintly blue glow. Set in the early 1960s, the movie centers on the sudden relationship of three Americans in Greece: the MacFarlands, spouses from mismatched generations (Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst), and Rydal, a young American tour guide (Oscar Isaac).
Based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, director Hossein Amini’s screen adaptation crystallizes the perverse attraction to dangerous strangers (a revisited theme for Amini, who wrote the screenplay for Nicolas Winding Refn's neo-noir crime film Drive). While Chester and Collette MacFarland attempt to outrun a Ponzi-type scheme that Chester orchestrated in the states, Chester violently confronts a private detective hired by angry shareholders, and Rydal volunteers to aid their escape from Athens.
Here, the characters find themselves bound to one another, inextricable from the moment of acquaintance. And much like this untrustworthy trio, the film moves with subtle sleights of hand. The tone shifts seamlessly but completely—in the span of just a few minutes, Collette and Rydal are dancing on a patio dewed in a happy sheen, while Chester lounges with a nightcap. Suddenly, their carefree Horos-like stepping seems hubristic, and a dangerous shadow sets over them. The twinkling of the night sky fades as they desperately heave their luggage to the river, all locked in mistrusting step with one another.
Much of the movie takes place during the day, under the heat of the Mediterranean sun. The brightness does better work than shadowy alleyways to reveal the dark flaws marking these characters. There's a low-grade anxiety that comes through, like the stressful glow of sweat breaking out over their foreheads and cheeks. The movie builds to this whirring, absorbing buzz, cracking through their unflappable con-artist veneers.
Dunst as Collete is particularly stunning, her face shifting from flirtatious, fearsome, forgiving, and fierce. Her best moments come while she negotiates between the two men. After leaving Athens, she flips her hair and lightly chastises them for acting surly when she is “finally in a good mood.” Collete is playing down that her pleasure comes from her fortuitous seat in the love triangle as she leans back and arches her smile. The costumes for Collete are just as precise; she’s clothed in glamorous, Elizabeth Taylor-esque sheaths. The movie opens with her and Mortensen by the Parthenon, in a light summer suit and a pillar of a yellowish pale dress, both as elongated and deceptive as the curved columns.
And Isaac, with his five o’clock shadow creeping in like a threat to his composure, is similarly fascinating as the sneaky, steady Rydel. He’s a man ambivalent about his alienation, who picks the wrong battles to fight his loneliness. He almost lets himself believe that by conning Colette and Chester, he will entrance the pair of them even more. On one leg of their travels on an over-heated bus, Rydel suggests that the spouses not attract notice from the authorities and sit apart. He possesses a coiled thrill while waiting to see who claims his company, like an unpopular child, whose pleasure that he will get a seatmate outweighs the embarrassment of using trickery to acquire one.
The Two Faces of January captures a consummate relationship triangle. These characters are like three ill-matched legs of a stool; the seat will balance but its off-kilter and unsettled. It’s the sudden reliance upon a third person that is the most intriguing part of this contemporary version of Highsmith's story. The dependence on a stranger in a strange land seems like an unlikely necessity in today's context, when a wealthy couple could be aided by the guidance of ever-presen
Based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, director Hossein Amini’s screen adaptation crystallizes the perverse attraction to dangerous strangers (a revisited theme for Amini, who wrote the screenplay for Nicolas Winding Refn's neo-noir crime film Drive). While Chester and Collette MacFarland attempt to outrun a Ponzi-type scheme that Chester orchestrated in the states, Chester violently confronts a private detective hired by angry shareholders, and Rydal volunteers to aid their escape from Athens.
Here, the characters find themselves bound to one another, inextricable from the moment of acquaintance. And much like this untrustworthy trio, the film moves with subtle sleights of hand. The tone shifts seamlessly but completely—in the span of just a few minutes, Collette and Rydal are dancing on a patio dewed in a happy sheen, while Chester lounges with a nightcap. Suddenly, their carefree Horos-like stepping seems hubristic, and a dangerous shadow sets over them. The twinkling of the night sky fades as they desperately heave their luggage to the river, all locked in mistrusting step with one another.
Much of the movie takes place during the day, under the heat of the Mediterranean sun. The brightness does better work than shadowy alleyways to reveal the dark flaws marking these characters. There's a low-grade anxiety that comes through, like the stressful glow of sweat breaking out over their foreheads and cheeks. The movie builds to this whirring, absorbing buzz, cracking through their unflappable con-artist veneers.
Dunst as Collete is particularly stunning, her face shifting from flirtatious, fearsome, forgiving, and fierce. Her best moments come while she negotiates between the two men. After leaving Athens, she flips her hair and lightly chastises them for acting surly when she is “finally in a good mood.” Collete is playing down that her pleasure comes from her fortuitous seat in the love triangle as she leans back and arches her smile. The costumes for Collete are just as precise; she’s clothed in glamorous, Elizabeth Taylor-esque sheaths. The movie opens with her and Mortensen by the Parthenon, in a light summer suit and a pillar of a yellowish pale dress, both as elongated and deceptive as the curved columns.
And Isaac, with his five o’clock shadow creeping in like a threat to his composure, is similarly fascinating as the sneaky, steady Rydel. He’s a man ambivalent about his alienation, who picks the wrong battles to fight his loneliness. He almost lets himself believe that by conning Colette and Chester, he will entrance the pair of them even more. On one leg of their travels on an over-heated bus, Rydel suggests that the spouses not attract notice from the authorities and sit apart. He possesses a coiled thrill while waiting to see who claims his company, like an unpopular child, whose pleasure that he will get a seatmate outweighs the embarrassment of using trickery to acquire one.
The Two Faces of January captures a consummate relationship triangle. These characters are like three ill-matched legs of a stool; the seat will balance but its off-kilter and unsettled. It’s the sudden reliance upon a third person that is the most intriguing part of this contemporary version of Highsmith's story. The dependence on a stranger in a strange land seems like an unlikely necessity in today's context, when a wealthy couple could be aided by the guidance of ever-presen