Extraordinary Women: LOVING HIGHSMITH – with Q&A!
Runtime: 84 mins | Release Year: 2022 | Rating: | Genre(s): Documentary
Production Country: Switzerland | Original Language: German
Showtimes

You most likely have seen the film The Talented Mr. Ripley, or perhaps Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. Who was the author who created these chilling sociopaths? Patricia Highsmith, an American writer, born in Texas in 1921 to an absent father and a mother who didn’t want her.
This recent documentary, based on Highsmith’s diaries, notebooks and reflections of her lovers, friends and family, explores the life, work and loves of this complex writer. She was gay, forced to conceal from her family and public her wild underground lifestyle and affairs – preferably with older, rich married women. She was addicted to alcohol, cigarettes and sex; she questioned her ability to love, acknowledging that her impossible quest likely centred on her mother. Highsmith could have been a character in her own novels, and, in fact, in the 1950s, she penned the quasi-autobiographical Carol, the first lesbian story with a happy ending.
How close to a true portrayal of this multi-faceted individual does Loving Highsmith get? Janice Kulyk Keefer, author, detective fiction fan and former Guelph University prof in modernist literature, will be our guest for the Q&A. She will help us assess the documentary and understand this author who could create the dublicitous and murderous Mr. Ripley.
Part of the Extraordinary Women series!
Cast/Crew Info
Director: Eva Vitija | Cast: Gwendoline Christie, Annina Butterworth, Marijane Meaker, Courtney Coates Blackman, Judy Coates