Loving Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith is one of most celebrated authors of the twentieth century with The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train amongst her most celebrated works, but she was always guarded about her personal life. Eva Vitja’s illuminating documentary is based on her unpublished diaries and reveals fascinating details of her inner life, particularly as the pioneering queer author who published the first positive lesbian love story, Carol, initially published under a pseudonym in the 50s. The film reveals her struggles with identity and turbulent family background and love affairs.

I think she was so much more emotional than you could imagine from her public face and published work. A lot of people I met thought of her as having a cold, analytical, observational quality. But in the personal text, there was someone emotionally attached and interested in brutality because she was sensitive and affected by everything and everyone she touched. [But] I believe her experience of love was a brutal one, that she experienced love as a form of violence against her, that somehow struck her identity and shook her.

Director Eva Vitija, from an interview with Filmmaker magazine