Loving Highsmith (2022) Movie Script
1
"Ideas come to me like birds
glimpsed out of the corner of my eye,
and I may try, or not try, to take
a more direct look at those birds.''
''The carousel music
sounded tired and very distant.
If he had Miriam on the boat with him,
she would hold his head
underwater with pleasure.
The lights of the water outlined the
silhouette of his head and her shoulders.
He had never been so close.
She faced him, but she
could barely see him.
Her hands closed around his throat
very hard, preventing her from crying out.
''The best stories are those composed
only by the emotions of the author.
Although a suspense
book is perfectly thought out,
there will be scenes
that, surely, the
writer has experienced
in the first person''.
Like so many other film directors, I was
drawn to the work of Patricia Highsmith.
Almost all of his books
were adapted for the screen.
But when I started reading
his unpublished diaries,
I fell in love with Patricia
Highsmith herself.
Her first diary entry
is quite mysterious:
''Here is my diary,
which contains the body.
The most painful feeling
is her own weakness.
LOVING HIGHSMITH
NARRATED BY GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE.
There was something strange about her.
She had weird ideas that
would never occur to me.
We met in the Village in New York.
She found out that she was a writer
and that she was interested in her.
She was not a very direct person.
she did not assume
that she had the right to anything,
and, in a way, that was fine, because
she was very famous when I met her.
Her first book, ''Strangers
on a Train'', was
made into a film by
a prestigious director
Yes, Hitchcock was interested.
Since I was 16 or 17 years old, I have
ideas that are sometimes called "creepy",
Do you want to hear what would
be the perfect murder for me?
I may be conservative, but
isn't murder against the law?
Was your initial idea
about two men trading kills?
Yes, that was the initial confirmed idea.
In my opinion, these things appear in
the mind, it is not known when or why.
Highsmith's writing style is so
cinematic that the universe becomes
perfect and somber for
the master of suspense.
But, from then on, she would
deal with the ''crime writer'' label.
They always categorize
me in mystery and suspense,
although I have never
written anything of mystery.
I write a story that
sometimes contains violence,
and sometimes it contains a murder,
and that's why they call it "of crimes".
She was prettier than
I thought she would be.
It's because I'm a
writer, and when we meet,
when I meet other writers, they
usually look the same as me.
And she was different.
We met at L's. The L would
stand for ''lesbian'', I suppose.
New York was full of gay bars.
It was the 50s.
I was very interested
in gay spaces.
I used to ask taxi drivers, and
I remember one of them told
me: "I know a place in such
and such a place." He took me.
And the owner, a woman,
she said: ''Don't come again. Never''.
I asked: ''Why? It's for me, isn't it?
And she said: '' It's for people
with discretion. You have loaded it''.
"You told the taxi driver
the name of this place."
Gay bars are a dark door
somewhere in Manhattan
where people who wanted to
go got off at the previous stop
or next to the subway so that they would
not be suspected of being homosexual.
Bergens Street.
Pat had more dedication than
any other writer he has ever met.
He wanted to write a
book about such a writer.
Later I wrote a book about her.
"A pretty dark-haired woman in a
trench coat drinking gin by the bar."
To the outside world, she
was Patricia Highsmith,
the author of ''Strangers on a train''.
But at the L's, she was Claire Morgan.
Pat was admired for her
anonymous novel ''Carol''.
Every lesbian had it in
her room and, for years,
It was the only lesbian
novel that ended well.
Do you think it was important
for Pat to write a gay novel?
Of course, of course.
I mean, she was a lesbian,
and, being a writer, it was something
she wanted to do. Write about that life.
People said: "Write something
like 'Strangers on a train',
she does it again. She
writes something like ''.
And at the time I didn't
feel inspired for that.
She worked in a busy
department store in New York,
she sold dolls.
It was rush hour on
the Christmas holidays,
and a rather conspicuous
woman arrived, in a fur coat.
''The woman seemed to radiate
light, I felt strange and dizzy,
on the verge of fainting.
Her eyes met in that instant.
''When she straightened
up, the woman was looking
at her with calm gray
eyes, to which she Therese
she couldn't look directly, but that
she couldn't stop looking either.
''Therese caught the
woman's scent for the first time,
and she wished with all her might
that the woman simply said:
"Why don't we meet again?"
I like your hat.
That night I wrote the
entire story in a notebook.
Highsmith never saw the woman again.
He feverishly wrote the entire
plot of the novel in his notebook.
At the end, she adds notes of her own
experiences from her personal journals.
''So in love with
my Carol. I want to
spend all my time
with her, all my nights.''
How this story emerges
from each of my bones.
She flowed out of my pen like out of
nowhere. Beginning, middle and end.
Although writing Carol was very liberating,
Highsmith hesitates
about publishing the book.
In the end, she publishes
it under a pseudonym.
No one used her real name in a gay book.
It wasn't smart to do it.
I used Ann Aldrich,
then Vin Packer, and many other names, but
never the real one, the one of my family.
Your second book, I think, you
published under a pseudonym. Why?
Yes. For nothing in particular.
Did the publisher
you sent it to accept it?
No way. New York
publishers turned it down,
and they said no one
would accept that ending.
A lesbian book had to end badly.
Someone from a
traditional family who fell in
love with a woman and,
depending on the publisher,
you felt sorry or you had a good time,
but it didn't last. It couldn't
last, and you knew it.
Why didn't Pat
republish a ''girls' book''?
For his family, of course
for his family, for his mother.
Those two things were
enough to stop anyone.
Look. Pat the hard.
COURTNEY, JUDY AND DAN COATES.
HIGHSMITH FAMILY, TEXAS.
I think she has a cigar in her mouth.
How cute, she looks like a child.
Yes.
This is Pat and Grandpa.
Her brother. Pat always
called him ''brother''.
She never referred to him as his cousin.
Dan and Pat grew up together.
Dan was a rodeo announcer.
We were probably a
typical Texas family,
focused on ranch and rodeo.
Growing up, we used to spend
every weekend going to rodeos.
Who was more famous here?
Pat or his ''brother'' Dan?
In Texas?
Dan.
Grandpa,
definitely my grandfather.
His childhood was a bit hectic, wasn't it?
Yes. My mother decided
to divorce before I was born.
Pat's mother Mary was divorced
nine days before she was born,
and she married Stanley Highsmith.
I don't know if it was Mary who
decided to move to New York,
or if her new husband decided for them,
but the mother went to New York and
left Pat with someone I'll call "grandma".
I have very good memories
of my first six years of life.
My grandmother had a
backyard and a big lawn.
Texas is definitely southern.
So I feel more southern
what a northerner
"My character was definitely
formed before I was six years old."
And six years is exactly how old
Pat was when her mother came back.
She started living with a
stepfather she didn't know
and a mother he only
knew when he visited Texas.
According to my mother,
he took turpentine to
induce an abortion,
but it didn't work out.
According to my
mother, in another story of
hers, my father told
her to have an abortion.
I have asked which story is the truth,
but my mom doesn't like direct
questions, so she hasn't answered yet.
I do know that both stories can be
real, if the turpentine thing is true''.
I'd bet anything
because Mary was horrified
by the idea of having children.
The first person you see
the one who loves you
unconditionally is your mother,
and I don't know if
Mary was capable of that.
MY MOTHER.
He dedicated two books to his mother.
She had motherly love,
Y....
he never reciprocated.
His mother was a bitch.
Highsmith clings to unattainable
love for his mother, writing:
"I am married to my mother, I
will never marry anyone else."
''I entered the New York public school.
She had just arrived from
Texas and was six years old.
When my mother came to pick
me up from school on the first day,
I walked hand in hand with a black kid.''
'' My grandmother was
surprised when she found
out that there were black
children in my school,
and she asked my
mother to change schools.
I had never been to school
before, not in the South,
and I didn't know anything
about segregation.''
''Today I saw two girls sitting
on the threshold of the door.
The older one was touching
the other one in a certain way
and when they saw me pass they
lowered their dress to their knees.
He knew that something
had happened that they
would surely remember
for the rest of their lives.
I know because the same
thing happened to me.
When did she realize
that she likes women?
In the boarding school.
Although I think she always knew.
I was always interested in women.
''When I was 14 years
old, my mother told me:
'Why don't you change your attitude and
get on the right track? Are you a lesbian?
You start to sound like one.
"At 16, when it became very
apparent that I wasn't interested in boys,
My mother found me a boyfriend and
used to go out with him to eat and dance.
It didn't seem pleasant to
me to kiss him goodnight.
It's like falling into
a bucket of oysters.''
I think she would have wanted not to be the
way she was because of his mother. Really,
something was wrong with her.
But he didn't reciprocate, except in the
most malicious and malicious way possible.
"Well, if you love me so much,
why don't you dress like a woman?"
''Why are you wearing pants?'',
you know that kind of thing.
Her mother wanted to
marry her off to a friend
she met while writing
''Strangers on a Train''.
''I tried to have
sex many times.
At that time she went to the psychoanalyst,
I was trying very
hard to be fit to marry.
For me, having sex was like
rubbing a loofah over my face.''
She went to the doctor to
try to change who she was.
She tried. She really tried.
But I don't know anyone who didn't try.
Including me.
We all tried. Unlucky.
"What causes almost all these difficulties
It's a cloud of guilt on my mother.
If my mother would take it off her,
there would be no problems between us.
Do you have the impression,
like me, that the writers are hurt?
Almost the entire human species is wounded.
There are always traumas in childhood.
But not everyone decides to be a writer.
Highsmith never told his
mother that he had written ''Carol''.
Before the novel saw the
light, he first fled to Europe.
He would travel extensively
between continents throughout his life.
"I am determined to make something
good out of every catastrophe in my life."
''The day will come when I travel
all over the world,
and I will meet
names and faces
of men, women and children.
I'll know the twists
of the roads,
and I will have so many friends
that it will be impossible to count them,
And still I'll feel alone
like now,
and I will continue wishing
meet more faces, names and cities.
I am the perpetual seeker.
"My love for boats never gets old."
"My love for boats never gets old."
Highsmith writes full diaries in
French, German, and Spanish.
He lists the destinations of his trips
on the first page of his notebooks.
''People'', ''Places'' and ''Things''
are the recurring categories of it.
He uses the word ''Keime'',
which is German for ''germs'',
to write down the seeds of ideas
that infect her with a new story.
One of the best known characters
you have created is Tom Ripley.
Yes, I started in the year 52
by a person I saw on the beach.
someone i saw
I walked on the beach
even at six in the morning,
with a disturbed, restless
air, completely alone.
And I was staying in a
hotel, in a hotel room,
- very high, really.
- Where did this go?
In Positano, Italy.
I never got to know that man,
but I started dreaming, that's all.
''I am very happy
working on my new book.
I have never been so sure.
The phrases are inserted into the paper
like nails. It's an amazing feeling.''
Highsmith lives a
double life from the start.
In her notebooks, she references
her ideas about homosexuality:
''Notes on an ever-present matter''.
"Homosexuals prefer
to be among themselves
because they have been
through the same hell,
and those who meet, it is
because they have survived''.
Pat made the most of it, that's for sure.
At that time there were
several nightclubs in Paris...
There was the Kathmandou,
the Jeu de Dames...
They were only for women,
but it was not written anywhere.
Once inside, there was
no need to hide or anything.
And we went there to have fun,
because there were young people,
so they played many types of music.
Disco, tango and others.
So there were young
people. And then there
were what we called
"the three-piece suits,"
the older lesbians, who
came to invite you to
a tango and such. We
laughed, but it was nice.
Pat had what we
call timid courage.
He liked to, how to
say, amuse the staff.
And the famous night we went to the Jeu de
Damas, where we were received like queens,
all the girls were fascinated
because she was Patricia Highsmith.
She brought ten, fifteen girls.
For me. What was she
supposed to do with all those girls?
I think she missed the
last train a bit on purpose.
I hadn't planned it, so I
started making my bed.
To leave her Then I
prepared my brother's bed
to sleep there.
And he said to me: ''
But what are you doing? ''.
"A sexual love can become
a religion, and serve as such."
The next morning, I
offered to give her a ride.
And from then on I received once
or twice about three letters a day.
In her wild youth in the United States,
she was known as ''the white wolf''
in all the lesbian
nightclubs in New York.
The number of her conquests was impressive.
Pat had her own women's festival.
That's for sure.
"If my experience were to
cease, sexually, emotionally,
I think you should take advantage.
I have lengthened eternity by an hour.
Millie Alford, who
started American Airlines.
Yes, the stewardess school?
Was it Aunt Millie who
created the stewardess school?
AHA.
Did you know that Pat
had an affair with her?
No way.
What has she said?
Pat had an affair with Millie.
How did she get through?
I'm trying to think
about their relationship.
I think it was kind of short.
I think all of her
adventures were pretty short.
They were related.
Yeah, but they were
distant relatives, right?
Now I'm going to think
about that for a while.
If you find out anything about this
that says anything about any of us...
So bad.
you burn it
Was Pat the typical Texan woman?
- Nerd.
Absolutely.
My grandmother slept in
a push up bra and a wig.
all the time, and my
grandfather liked it that way.
And Grandpa just thought that
she seemed very happy like this.
The men of the Coates family have
always done many things, moral or not,
but a woman should
behave like a woman.
A lady had to behave like a lady,
and you couldn't deviate from it.
''Tabea has knocked me down, she
has mentally knocked me to the ground.
All I want in life right now is to
laugh and have a beer with her."
The night life, the night life...
I was very crazy then.
My best weekends were the ones
when I came home at 6 in the morning.
We danced at the Pour Elle.
I was also there with Pat Highsmith.
Or also in transvestite bars
where David Bowie also went.
She was always amused
that he was around so lively.
He sat in the back and said, "I'm in
the back, where the normals sit, right?"
That is, men in suits and ties.
Being a PD and a man also has the
grace of him. Or play the role of a man.
- PS? - Sassy parents.
I love.
They wear men's clothing.
And the attitude is also male.
Male friendships are cultivated,
you can compete with men.
You are not a housewife, so to speak.
A round is paid from time
to time at the local corner.
The others always
said: "Today he has put
on a dress, today he
will not pay anything".
And, as a cheeky father,
always a round for everyone.
And how does one feel as a man?
Good. Strong.
In general, women do not
play important roles in his books.
I find it difficult to see
women as a whole,
independent.
I still see them in relation to a man.
And it's strange, because my mother
had her own career from the age of twenty.
So, in my childhood, she
had the image of a woman
strong and independent and
yet I don't see them that way.
Why do you think Pat always
wrote books with male leads?
Because they sell better.
Women like to read about men
and men like to read about men.
What are you doing...?
What do you want to do, little snail?
Pat was fascinated by the spiral.
And, deep down, snails
are hermaphrodites.
Perhaps that was also
what fascinated him.
She liked people
a little half and half.
When we take a look at Ripley, we
see that he's not very masculine either.
He also has a bit of a feminine side.
Mr Ripley?
It's me.
Ripley is her.
Of course. Welcome.
Thanks.
She is her alter ego.
"Writers don't have a
consistent personality."
I like it. margin.
''The face with which they present
themselves to old friends or strangers.
They are always part of their characters.''
Dislike.
margin.
Ripley is different.
I represented him as a person
who doesn't feel guilt normally.
As if she's a bit she
just doesn't bother him
like she should, or like
she annoys most people.
He should she be the one to say
that I fell in love the day
that I laid eyes on you?
Should he...?
What are you doing?
Nothing, hang out.
Sorry.
take off my clothes
Ripley's sex life is very ambiguous.
He is quite shy and a bit
homosexual, she would say...
Next station, San Remo.
What I'm wondering is: you
don't admire Ripley, do you?
Of course not. But I think...
Well, I hope Ripley is fun.
It seems to people that... Even in the
United States, Ripley is quite popular.
But, of course, he is a murderer.
Yes, but in the end he only kills
when he thinks it's the right thing to do.
Some say that most murders
happen within the family.
I admit that the first
murder of his was very cruel.
The funniest thing is that I don't try to
pretend I'm someone else. And you do.
How boring.
I've been totally honest
with you about my feelings.
And who are you?
A third rate scrounger.
Who are you to tell me anything?
You give me goosebumps.
Shut!
Always ''Dickie, Dickie,
Dickie'' like a little girl.
You shut up.
For! For!
I don't think murder
is my thing. If
someone were to
ask, I'd say it's his fault.
The absence or presence of guilt.
Well, you could also say
that it is the overwhelming
desire to confess, to
fall into your own trap.
That ''OMG, what have I done?''.
It can be a toothache.
While Ripley is very happy with what
he has done, he doesn't give a damn.
and gets away with it. She's great.
Until now. But what
do you plan to do with it?
She will always get her way.
Oh yeah?
He wanted me to
leave New York. I didn't
think it would look
good to him, but he did.
He had a huge black cat.
And I had four cats.
So the seven of us
drove to Pennsylvania.
The cats were in boxes, screeching.
"My girl, my wife, my country wife,
beating my eggs and making my bed,
doing her hair the way she likes it.
Bonfires and branches,
apples and figs,
no phone, no
guests, just our routine
of working, making love
and, who cooks today?
It was easy to love
her, let's put it that way.
Even if it was a sin
to have a female lover.
It was a good sin.
Two women living together. All the world
I would understand that
they would pool their salaries,
because the women did not earn much.
Nobody ever thought they did it for sex.
Some children sometimes
came to the house to chat.
They were children of neighbors.
They came to the back door,
we were making Sunday dinner
and we were kissing.
My goodness, how they ran.
They ran home really
fast and didn't come back.
In a small town where
rumors carry a lot of weight,
there are many people who
ask: ''What did you say? Repeat it.
Have you seen them kiss?
Pat kept diaries, and there was
one that was lost. He thought I had it.
''She was drunk enough to tell
me that she had read my diaries,
which caused her to stop
writing them. Until now, I guess.''
Maybe she did.
Maybe she did, because, well,
I am human.
But there weren't many
opportunities to do so either.
She was also like a cat.
She was not heard when she walked.
That breach of trust
drives Highsmith
to write down her most private
thoughts in notebooks from then on.
She would spend her whole life worrying
about someone reading her journals.
She put warnings and
curses on the front pages.
DO NOT TOUCH ME.
The first thing Pat did
in the morning was work.
She always drank orange
juice in the morning.
And one morning I saw him at the table.
I picked him up to take
him away and he told me:
''What have you got there?''
And I said, "Your juice."
And he said, "Try it."
He was loaded with gin.
So every morning that
she was there working
and doing stuff she
was getting gin thin.
He didn't think someone
who wrote so well
He could put himself in
such a vulnerable position.
''After a very nice dinner,
MJ ran upstairs and said:
'You are drunk. I don't
want no more fights,
Pat'. And we sleep
in separate rooms.''
''Those days melt
into each other.
My drinking scares him,
and I'm terrified of his temper."
She said: ''It's impossible,
we can't live together''.
In the end, we had the
typical breakup. And she left.
Did Pat expect much from love?
We all expect a lot. When
we fall in love, we have
high expectations.
That's what it consists of.
''We have to consider
ourselves a fertile land
in which to draw.
If not, we grow rotten,
like an unmilked cow. And if we let
something untapped,
dies inside us, wasted''.
Writing is a way of
analyzing experiences.
But personal experiences
are quite limited.
Even if you get divorced a couple of
times or something. They are limited.
But, if you use your
imagination, they are limitless.
Highsmith tries to write
another ''girls' book'',
as she calls her lesbian novels,
in which she weaves together the
personal love experiences of her diaries.
''The objective of this book
is to reflect the adult woman
that she fails to avoid the
practice of homosexuality.
It's the story of her own youth, her
selfishness, her idealism, her maturity.''
Highsmith did not finish the manuscript
and she did not publish
any more ''girls' books''.
After a visit to Texas,
she fears that she
will be identified as
the author of ''Carol''.
Her mother talked to the family
pastor about the secret book.
She wrote a letter to her stepfather:
''I never showed that book to my mother.
She found it because I let
you and her stay in my flat.
Wouldn't it occur to any idiot that if
someone wrote a book under a pseudonym
is it because you want to
remain anonymous to the public?
But no, my mother doesn't think of it.''
''I often wonder what my
mother thinks I'm doing wrong.
I have not been in
prison, I do not use drugs,
I have not been divorced, I
have not had illegitimate children,
I make a good living.
I'm even in the Who's Who.
The International, published in London''.
Come on guys.
I don't recall ever
hearing her mother say:
''Have you talked to Pat?
Do you know anything
about her? Do you know
when she will come home?
Those two people in my life were
never in the same room together.
So to think of
them as mother and
daughter and why
she doesn't care,
I never would have happened.
Highsmith hired a lawyer.
She broke all legal ties with her
mother and she ended up disinherited.
''I would like to separate from
my mother, my mother from me,
legally speaking, of any obligation.
It would certainly be a great relief
for me, and I hope for her as well.''
Pat went to London
often, and he met a woman.
It took me years to find one of the
most important women in Highsmith's life.
By the time I found out who she
was, the woman had just passed away.
I will keep her anonymity
and call her ''Caroline''.
It is very important not to
say the name of this woman.
I don't think I've ever
seen pictures of her.
Pat talked about her a lot. Almost always.
''The color comes and goes from her cheeks.
Her brown eyes look directly at me.
And brown is the last color of all
that I would use to try to describe her.
Cream, pink, even white.
What is the color of warmth?
She was married, she
even had children, I think.
I don't even know what this woman is like
physically. I know absolutely nothing.
But apparently it was an
important story in her life.
Her married lover
of hers tried to sneak
away to be with her
in Paris for a few days.
"I will make you a necklace of verses,
one by one, chained quickly.
A thread of time to remember,
to remember those days
to preserve those days forever.
''Paris hit us like lightning,
and, dazzled, we caressed each
other between the stones of Notre Dame,
seeing with the tips of the fingers''.
''Beauty, perfection, completion.
All seen and achieved.
Death is the next territory,
one step to the left.''
"Can I kiss you at some threshold?"
''Already at home. I'm
totally crazy about her
And I have to muster all the courage
and determination that I
have to go forward alone''.
''C.'s letters are... like she's
making love to me writing them.
They make me intoxicated and upset,
and writing to her also has that effect''.
''It is not worth making more efforts
to live without her. I do not can.
And, in my 41 years, I have never
said or written this about anyone.''
"That means England."
It was the first time Highsmith had
moved to another country for a woman.
She bought a country house in a
small English village, near her mistress.
''I can't sleep. It's been
wonderful coming to
London. C. opening
the door in a bathrobe''.
''As she wrote tonight in my
notebook number twenty-six,
in which the last city and the
last country I'm in is Caroline...''.
''The only thing I could wish for:
tranquility, Caroline, cats, the sea.
I am very happy with her. As if she lives
in a dream world, even though she is real.
Harge, what's up?
Any. Can I only visit my
wife if there is a problem?
''Two letters from C.
The difficulties of leading a double life
on the grounds that she is physically ill.
I know she wants to
tell her husband about it.
How do you know my wife?
Please Harge.
"Paris should remain a
secret no matter what."
''I am concerned about her
strong sense of conventionality.
I don't know if C. will be able to
support fast, or even slow, change.
that she would mean a life with me.
We could be discreet forever
but, without a husband, would she be
happy? Could she take on the world?
''The affair with the married woman.
There are those who would
think that she would feel satisfied
with that brief period of time together.
But no one is satisfied with
being an emotional second course.
I miss C so much. I love her in
my days, in my bed, in my life.''
''C. she would eternally prolong this
sadistic relationship that she has with me.
It is not a relationship. She
doesn't flow, she doesn't cheer,
but she wouldn't cut it.
Never. So I have done it.
It was the worst
moment of my entire life.''
"In Paris, when I began to enjoy
existence for existence's sake,
began the beginning of the end for me.''
''I'm getting everything ready
to sell the house in England.
It is something negative.
Maybe like an abortion.''
''I may not be able to love... I want
something romantic, maybe indefinite.
I repeat the pattern of my
mother's semi-rejection towards me''.
"Sometimes I have the
taste of death in my mouth,
These lonely afternoons
In five years, two years, one year,
will i fall flat on my face again
and curse what I
hesitate to call my destiny,
my boss?''
''Mornings are hectic,
like every morning.
In the afternoon, exhausted, I'm done
Tasks. And I am
confronted with myself
and with my not-me once again.
Then I work.
I work like an earthworm
I work like a termite digging a tunnel,
a bridge.
I work for a future that I no longer see.
"Today's decision: never share
a house with anyone again."
This very famous American
novelist has chosen
live in a small French
commune in Montcourt.
Why has she decided to live
in France, Patricia Highsmith?
Is a very quiet site. It's fine here.
The characters in her books
have a lot of contact with people.
But you... You live alone here.
Yes, when I'm alone I think better
and the ideas come by themselves.
When I spend too much
time with others, I feel tense,
very tense, and afterwards
I feel like I'm exhausted.
Don't you think
that living in a house
full of people who
love us is fine too?
Yes, if we find them.
If we find those people
who love us, yes.
This is what he liked.
It's very similar. I have the
impression that it is the same color.
Yes?
I think.
And there the house
is already all covered...
It was like that. All
covered by vegetation.
Where did she write?
Over there. In that room.
Every poet knows that the best images
come when the mind is not very attentive,
when you are busy doing other things.
mechanical things.
Inspiration and ideas
come from the subconscious,
but you have to give the
subconscious freedom of movement.
She always said that she
took breaks during the day.
That she began to daydream.
She even she came to lead those dreams.
This silence. Extraordinary.
To work, you find it very
important to live alone.
I think so.
Why?
For the silence and
for not having to speak.
''The profound indignity
of being interviewed.
It's strange, it
eats away at you''.
I feel like a patient on an
operating table with some disease.
The doctor says, "Take off your clothes."
He becomes very disturbing.
Okay, I'm going to ask a
silly question: are you happy?
In general, yes. Yes, why not?
"Writing is a substitute
for the life that I
cannot live, that it is
impossible for me to live."
To this day, so many movies have
been made based on Highsmith's books,
that she was invited to chair
the jury of the Berlin Film Festival.
Pat Highsmith has ever
been seen at the Film Festival.
That's how we met.
Back then, I was in charge of
production with Ulrike Ottinger,
so I had made the
costumes and participated
and collaborated on the script.
I read that she wanted you to
have the lead role in the Ripley shoot.
There was talk that you
could shoot with a woman.
Then she was bought by others,
because we had the idea
of shooting a pirate movie.
"I did not fall in love
with flesh or blood,
but of an image: the sailor's cap,
that funny mustache, the little bird
perched on the sailor's right shoulder,
and the eyes, confused
but, at the same time, serious.
If I touched you, maybe you would crack
or you would dissolve, like a
dream we try too hard to remember.
How did you find out that
Pat had fallen in love with you?
It was more than friendship,
it could almost be love.
She wrote it to me in a letter.
Yeah, we actually corresponded a lot.
He always knew what he was
doing, or if he had changed publishers,
or if she had sold a book.
All of Highsmith's experiences with Tabea
snuck into Ripley's fourth
novel, "In Ripley's Footsteps."
Like Tabea and Pat, Ripley and the
boy from the book visit Pfaueninsel.
I wish she was a good poet,
she capable of condensing everything
in a clear and beautiful sphere,
like a transparent gem, polished,
something to keep,
something small in the pocket,
something to look at
that she didn't hurt anyone."
Now yes.
How nice.
Majestic, grandiose.
It's not pretty?
Pat asked me if I would
like to go to Montcourt.
I thought about it, but it couldn't be.
I would have been bored in
that lonely house in France.
"There are no memories of pleasure or
pain between the years of such a great love
but it had a sad ending.
He had just broken up
with the famous Tabea.
And he said, "Yes, I'm dying of sadness."
He wasn't able to write anything anymore,
and I think he couldn't sleep either.
It was really, really bad.
For the first time in his
life, Highsmith couldn't write.
After starting the Ripley novel
that he had inspired Tabea,
he falters after writing 50 pages.
It is December 6, 1976.
There is nothing
to fear but fear itself.
I know less and less
who I am
or who are the others.
"The real hell is between the
dream and reality." Do you agree?
Yes, I agree, and I
wrote that sentence years
ago, before I even
thought of writing this book.
Because I feel it myself: it is a
disappointment of what one expects.
But in a way I think it's normal.
I mean, it doesn't necessarily
mean we're going crazy.
Because I think almost everyone
has hope, whether it's in their job,
in their marriage or in something
that doesn't come to fruition.
He wrote me that he loved me very much.
"For the lightness you
have brought into my life."
And he put in brackets: ''With 'lightness'
I mean the absence of heaviness''.
He told me that thanks to
me he was able to write again.
And that he had regained a taste for life.
He finished his book.
And I felt that she saw myself
in the young man in the book.
That was precisely the relationship
between Ripley and this young man.
It was different from previous Ripleys.
There was a nice side.
Ripley didn't have the cynical side of him.
He had softened a bit.
She decided to dedicate the
famous In Ripley's Footsteps to me.
She sent me this letter to ask
me how I preferred the dedication.
And, of course, I accepted ''To
Monique Buffet''. And she was very happy.
It was complicated, because
I had known for a while
to the girl he still lives with.
Therefore, I was between two stories.
He couldn't totally ignore her.
He couldn't, because there was
something very moving about her.
It is very difficult to explain, really.
"I guess tomorrow your
letter will say, 'Well, Pat,
She's been good knowing you for a while
but we'd better stop seeing each other'.
But don't think I'm sad about it.
It's not your fault, and
you shouldn't think about it.''
His departure to Switzerland
was very dramatic.
His tax history.
There was a police raid on his house.
She was truly offended to
be considered a criminal.
She did not want to continue in France.
''Life in Switzerland:
I have the impression that the lack
of sunlight influences people a lot.
I like calm because
inside I'm nervous.''
He often talked about how he
couldn't stand the Swiss winters,
months and months passed
without sun, it was cold.
''I feel like I've fallen
into an unhappy trap.
In those moments I remember Montcourt and
the sunlight... that I will never forget''.
Just a few weeks after selling his
house in France, he wants to buy it back,
but he doesn't get it.
So he stays to build another.
She was very, very proud of her house.
A very modern house.
But she seemed very happy about it.
She never would have thought that one day
she Pat she would have a house like this.
The Bunker.
"It must be strange to walk into a
house and start living in it, fix it up,
knowing that it will be the
last house you will live in''.
I carry old memories with
me like a very heavy suitcase.
I wish I never met this
person or that person,
but I met them, and I don't forget''.
''I've spent two hours
reading my old diaries.
My life is a chronicle
of incredible mistakes.
Things I should have
done, and vice versa.''
By then, Highsmith was making
fewer and fewer entries in his diary,
and in these he began to rant
against Jews, Arabs and blacks.
As if he went back to the racism of
his beloved grandmother in Texas.
''I live my life backwards.
My envy has turned to hate,
and hate, in disdain.
Now you, who know a
freedom that I never knew,
You wonder the reason for my bitterness.
You say I'm full of resentment.
But resentment is my second emotion,
one I knew long before
I knew what to call her.
I know less and less
who I am
or who are the others.
''Writing is the only way to feel
decent,'' Highsmith once said.
Already very ill with leukemia, she
began planning another Ripley novel.
"In some ways, the months
have been fraught with angst."
It would take a thousand
words to describe mental fear.
It is as if, suddenly, Death is
here, and yet no pain is felt.
One talks quietly with
friends and doctors''.
The last chapter of her
famous love story was left open.
Nearly 40 years after her first appearance,
Highsmith decides to abandon anonymity
and publish ''Carol'' under her own name.
A book like Carol , which is
so interesting now for people
who know her work well, is not
only because it is a gay novel,
but because it is also a very positive
gay novel. It has a happy ending.
Yeah, for once the characters
don't commit suicide, or fall
down a sewer or... or slit
their wrists, that's good too.
At least they try to do
something with their lives.
It doesn't mean it will eventually happen.
But at least they try.
In hindsight, that's pretty
unusual for you. You are
not a writer who is
characterized by happy endings.
For much of the novel, it looks
like it's not going to end well.
And suddenly, it takes a turn and
the two women are back together.
Was it a conscious decision
that the novel ended well?
I think so, because...
Yes, he was aware.
It was what she wanted, totally.
Highsmith worked to the end on
a new gay novel, this time openly.
She dies just a few
weeks after it sees the light.
She ends with her last
published words of hers:
"The funniest thing is that
Rickie was quietly happy."
"At dawn, after my death, hours before,
the sunlight will bathe
at seven, as always,
those trees that I know.
Greenery will burst, dark
green shadows will give way
in the sun, indifferent, benign but cruel.
Without crying to me
on the day of my death.
The trees will rest in
the breezeless dawn,
blind and indifferent,
the trees I knew,
whom he cared for.
Elena San Miguel Olivares
"Ideas come to me like birds
glimpsed out of the corner of my eye,
and I may try, or not try, to take
a more direct look at those birds.''
''The carousel music
sounded tired and very distant.
If he had Miriam on the boat with him,
she would hold his head
underwater with pleasure.
The lights of the water outlined the
silhouette of his head and her shoulders.
He had never been so close.
She faced him, but she
could barely see him.
Her hands closed around his throat
very hard, preventing her from crying out.
''The best stories are those composed
only by the emotions of the author.
Although a suspense
book is perfectly thought out,
there will be scenes
that, surely, the
writer has experienced
in the first person''.
Like so many other film directors, I was
drawn to the work of Patricia Highsmith.
Almost all of his books
were adapted for the screen.
But when I started reading
his unpublished diaries,
I fell in love with Patricia
Highsmith herself.
Her first diary entry
is quite mysterious:
''Here is my diary,
which contains the body.
The most painful feeling
is her own weakness.
LOVING HIGHSMITH
NARRATED BY GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE.
There was something strange about her.
She had weird ideas that
would never occur to me.
We met in the Village in New York.
She found out that she was a writer
and that she was interested in her.
She was not a very direct person.
she did not assume
that she had the right to anything,
and, in a way, that was fine, because
she was very famous when I met her.
Her first book, ''Strangers
on a Train'', was
made into a film by
a prestigious director
Yes, Hitchcock was interested.
Since I was 16 or 17 years old, I have
ideas that are sometimes called "creepy",
Do you want to hear what would
be the perfect murder for me?
I may be conservative, but
isn't murder against the law?
Was your initial idea
about two men trading kills?
Yes, that was the initial confirmed idea.
In my opinion, these things appear in
the mind, it is not known when or why.
Highsmith's writing style is so
cinematic that the universe becomes
perfect and somber for
the master of suspense.
But, from then on, she would
deal with the ''crime writer'' label.
They always categorize
me in mystery and suspense,
although I have never
written anything of mystery.
I write a story that
sometimes contains violence,
and sometimes it contains a murder,
and that's why they call it "of crimes".
She was prettier than
I thought she would be.
It's because I'm a
writer, and when we meet,
when I meet other writers, they
usually look the same as me.
And she was different.
We met at L's. The L would
stand for ''lesbian'', I suppose.
New York was full of gay bars.
It was the 50s.
I was very interested
in gay spaces.
I used to ask taxi drivers, and
I remember one of them told
me: "I know a place in such
and such a place." He took me.
And the owner, a woman,
she said: ''Don't come again. Never''.
I asked: ''Why? It's for me, isn't it?
And she said: '' It's for people
with discretion. You have loaded it''.
"You told the taxi driver
the name of this place."
Gay bars are a dark door
somewhere in Manhattan
where people who wanted to
go got off at the previous stop
or next to the subway so that they would
not be suspected of being homosexual.
Bergens Street.
Pat had more dedication than
any other writer he has ever met.
He wanted to write a
book about such a writer.
Later I wrote a book about her.
"A pretty dark-haired woman in a
trench coat drinking gin by the bar."
To the outside world, she
was Patricia Highsmith,
the author of ''Strangers on a train''.
But at the L's, she was Claire Morgan.
Pat was admired for her
anonymous novel ''Carol''.
Every lesbian had it in
her room and, for years,
It was the only lesbian
novel that ended well.
Do you think it was important
for Pat to write a gay novel?
Of course, of course.
I mean, she was a lesbian,
and, being a writer, it was something
she wanted to do. Write about that life.
People said: "Write something
like 'Strangers on a train',
she does it again. She
writes something like ''.
And at the time I didn't
feel inspired for that.
She worked in a busy
department store in New York,
she sold dolls.
It was rush hour on
the Christmas holidays,
and a rather conspicuous
woman arrived, in a fur coat.
''The woman seemed to radiate
light, I felt strange and dizzy,
on the verge of fainting.
Her eyes met in that instant.
''When she straightened
up, the woman was looking
at her with calm gray
eyes, to which she Therese
she couldn't look directly, but that
she couldn't stop looking either.
''Therese caught the
woman's scent for the first time,
and she wished with all her might
that the woman simply said:
"Why don't we meet again?"
I like your hat.
That night I wrote the
entire story in a notebook.
Highsmith never saw the woman again.
He feverishly wrote the entire
plot of the novel in his notebook.
At the end, she adds notes of her own
experiences from her personal journals.
''So in love with
my Carol. I want to
spend all my time
with her, all my nights.''
How this story emerges
from each of my bones.
She flowed out of my pen like out of
nowhere. Beginning, middle and end.
Although writing Carol was very liberating,
Highsmith hesitates
about publishing the book.
In the end, she publishes
it under a pseudonym.
No one used her real name in a gay book.
It wasn't smart to do it.
I used Ann Aldrich,
then Vin Packer, and many other names, but
never the real one, the one of my family.
Your second book, I think, you
published under a pseudonym. Why?
Yes. For nothing in particular.
Did the publisher
you sent it to accept it?
No way. New York
publishers turned it down,
and they said no one
would accept that ending.
A lesbian book had to end badly.
Someone from a
traditional family who fell in
love with a woman and,
depending on the publisher,
you felt sorry or you had a good time,
but it didn't last. It couldn't
last, and you knew it.
Why didn't Pat
republish a ''girls' book''?
For his family, of course
for his family, for his mother.
Those two things were
enough to stop anyone.
Look. Pat the hard.
COURTNEY, JUDY AND DAN COATES.
HIGHSMITH FAMILY, TEXAS.
I think she has a cigar in her mouth.
How cute, she looks like a child.
Yes.
This is Pat and Grandpa.
Her brother. Pat always
called him ''brother''.
She never referred to him as his cousin.
Dan and Pat grew up together.
Dan was a rodeo announcer.
We were probably a
typical Texas family,
focused on ranch and rodeo.
Growing up, we used to spend
every weekend going to rodeos.
Who was more famous here?
Pat or his ''brother'' Dan?
In Texas?
Dan.
Grandpa,
definitely my grandfather.
His childhood was a bit hectic, wasn't it?
Yes. My mother decided
to divorce before I was born.
Pat's mother Mary was divorced
nine days before she was born,
and she married Stanley Highsmith.
I don't know if it was Mary who
decided to move to New York,
or if her new husband decided for them,
but the mother went to New York and
left Pat with someone I'll call "grandma".
I have very good memories
of my first six years of life.
My grandmother had a
backyard and a big lawn.
Texas is definitely southern.
So I feel more southern
what a northerner
"My character was definitely
formed before I was six years old."
And six years is exactly how old
Pat was when her mother came back.
She started living with a
stepfather she didn't know
and a mother he only
knew when he visited Texas.
According to my mother,
he took turpentine to
induce an abortion,
but it didn't work out.
According to my
mother, in another story of
hers, my father told
her to have an abortion.
I have asked which story is the truth,
but my mom doesn't like direct
questions, so she hasn't answered yet.
I do know that both stories can be
real, if the turpentine thing is true''.
I'd bet anything
because Mary was horrified
by the idea of having children.
The first person you see
the one who loves you
unconditionally is your mother,
and I don't know if
Mary was capable of that.
MY MOTHER.
He dedicated two books to his mother.
She had motherly love,
Y....
he never reciprocated.
His mother was a bitch.
Highsmith clings to unattainable
love for his mother, writing:
"I am married to my mother, I
will never marry anyone else."
''I entered the New York public school.
She had just arrived from
Texas and was six years old.
When my mother came to pick
me up from school on the first day,
I walked hand in hand with a black kid.''
'' My grandmother was
surprised when she found
out that there were black
children in my school,
and she asked my
mother to change schools.
I had never been to school
before, not in the South,
and I didn't know anything
about segregation.''
''Today I saw two girls sitting
on the threshold of the door.
The older one was touching
the other one in a certain way
and when they saw me pass they
lowered their dress to their knees.
He knew that something
had happened that they
would surely remember
for the rest of their lives.
I know because the same
thing happened to me.
When did she realize
that she likes women?
In the boarding school.
Although I think she always knew.
I was always interested in women.
''When I was 14 years
old, my mother told me:
'Why don't you change your attitude and
get on the right track? Are you a lesbian?
You start to sound like one.
"At 16, when it became very
apparent that I wasn't interested in boys,
My mother found me a boyfriend and
used to go out with him to eat and dance.
It didn't seem pleasant to
me to kiss him goodnight.
It's like falling into
a bucket of oysters.''
I think she would have wanted not to be the
way she was because of his mother. Really,
something was wrong with her.
But he didn't reciprocate, except in the
most malicious and malicious way possible.
"Well, if you love me so much,
why don't you dress like a woman?"
''Why are you wearing pants?'',
you know that kind of thing.
Her mother wanted to
marry her off to a friend
she met while writing
''Strangers on a Train''.
''I tried to have
sex many times.
At that time she went to the psychoanalyst,
I was trying very
hard to be fit to marry.
For me, having sex was like
rubbing a loofah over my face.''
She went to the doctor to
try to change who she was.
She tried. She really tried.
But I don't know anyone who didn't try.
Including me.
We all tried. Unlucky.
"What causes almost all these difficulties
It's a cloud of guilt on my mother.
If my mother would take it off her,
there would be no problems between us.
Do you have the impression,
like me, that the writers are hurt?
Almost the entire human species is wounded.
There are always traumas in childhood.
But not everyone decides to be a writer.
Highsmith never told his
mother that he had written ''Carol''.
Before the novel saw the
light, he first fled to Europe.
He would travel extensively
between continents throughout his life.
"I am determined to make something
good out of every catastrophe in my life."
''The day will come when I travel
all over the world,
and I will meet
names and faces
of men, women and children.
I'll know the twists
of the roads,
and I will have so many friends
that it will be impossible to count them,
And still I'll feel alone
like now,
and I will continue wishing
meet more faces, names and cities.
I am the perpetual seeker.
"My love for boats never gets old."
"My love for boats never gets old."
Highsmith writes full diaries in
French, German, and Spanish.
He lists the destinations of his trips
on the first page of his notebooks.
''People'', ''Places'' and ''Things''
are the recurring categories of it.
He uses the word ''Keime'',
which is German for ''germs'',
to write down the seeds of ideas
that infect her with a new story.
One of the best known characters
you have created is Tom Ripley.
Yes, I started in the year 52
by a person I saw on the beach.
someone i saw
I walked on the beach
even at six in the morning,
with a disturbed, restless
air, completely alone.
And I was staying in a
hotel, in a hotel room,
- very high, really.
- Where did this go?
In Positano, Italy.
I never got to know that man,
but I started dreaming, that's all.
''I am very happy
working on my new book.
I have never been so sure.
The phrases are inserted into the paper
like nails. It's an amazing feeling.''
Highsmith lives a
double life from the start.
In her notebooks, she references
her ideas about homosexuality:
''Notes on an ever-present matter''.
"Homosexuals prefer
to be among themselves
because they have been
through the same hell,
and those who meet, it is
because they have survived''.
Pat made the most of it, that's for sure.
At that time there were
several nightclubs in Paris...
There was the Kathmandou,
the Jeu de Dames...
They were only for women,
but it was not written anywhere.
Once inside, there was
no need to hide or anything.
And we went there to have fun,
because there were young people,
so they played many types of music.
Disco, tango and others.
So there were young
people. And then there
were what we called
"the three-piece suits,"
the older lesbians, who
came to invite you to
a tango and such. We
laughed, but it was nice.
Pat had what we
call timid courage.
He liked to, how to
say, amuse the staff.
And the famous night we went to the Jeu de
Damas, where we were received like queens,
all the girls were fascinated
because she was Patricia Highsmith.
She brought ten, fifteen girls.
For me. What was she
supposed to do with all those girls?
I think she missed the
last train a bit on purpose.
I hadn't planned it, so I
started making my bed.
To leave her Then I
prepared my brother's bed
to sleep there.
And he said to me: ''
But what are you doing? ''.
"A sexual love can become
a religion, and serve as such."
The next morning, I
offered to give her a ride.
And from then on I received once
or twice about three letters a day.
In her wild youth in the United States,
she was known as ''the white wolf''
in all the lesbian
nightclubs in New York.
The number of her conquests was impressive.
Pat had her own women's festival.
That's for sure.
"If my experience were to
cease, sexually, emotionally,
I think you should take advantage.
I have lengthened eternity by an hour.
Millie Alford, who
started American Airlines.
Yes, the stewardess school?
Was it Aunt Millie who
created the stewardess school?
AHA.
Did you know that Pat
had an affair with her?
No way.
What has she said?
Pat had an affair with Millie.
How did she get through?
I'm trying to think
about their relationship.
I think it was kind of short.
I think all of her
adventures were pretty short.
They were related.
Yeah, but they were
distant relatives, right?
Now I'm going to think
about that for a while.
If you find out anything about this
that says anything about any of us...
So bad.
you burn it
Was Pat the typical Texan woman?
- Nerd.
Absolutely.
My grandmother slept in
a push up bra and a wig.
all the time, and my
grandfather liked it that way.
And Grandpa just thought that
she seemed very happy like this.
The men of the Coates family have
always done many things, moral or not,
but a woman should
behave like a woman.
A lady had to behave like a lady,
and you couldn't deviate from it.
''Tabea has knocked me down, she
has mentally knocked me to the ground.
All I want in life right now is to
laugh and have a beer with her."
The night life, the night life...
I was very crazy then.
My best weekends were the ones
when I came home at 6 in the morning.
We danced at the Pour Elle.
I was also there with Pat Highsmith.
Or also in transvestite bars
where David Bowie also went.
She was always amused
that he was around so lively.
He sat in the back and said, "I'm in
the back, where the normals sit, right?"
That is, men in suits and ties.
Being a PD and a man also has the
grace of him. Or play the role of a man.
- PS? - Sassy parents.
I love.
They wear men's clothing.
And the attitude is also male.
Male friendships are cultivated,
you can compete with men.
You are not a housewife, so to speak.
A round is paid from time
to time at the local corner.
The others always
said: "Today he has put
on a dress, today he
will not pay anything".
And, as a cheeky father,
always a round for everyone.
And how does one feel as a man?
Good. Strong.
In general, women do not
play important roles in his books.
I find it difficult to see
women as a whole,
independent.
I still see them in relation to a man.
And it's strange, because my mother
had her own career from the age of twenty.
So, in my childhood, she
had the image of a woman
strong and independent and
yet I don't see them that way.
Why do you think Pat always
wrote books with male leads?
Because they sell better.
Women like to read about men
and men like to read about men.
What are you doing...?
What do you want to do, little snail?
Pat was fascinated by the spiral.
And, deep down, snails
are hermaphrodites.
Perhaps that was also
what fascinated him.
She liked people
a little half and half.
When we take a look at Ripley, we
see that he's not very masculine either.
He also has a bit of a feminine side.
Mr Ripley?
It's me.
Ripley is her.
Of course. Welcome.
Thanks.
She is her alter ego.
"Writers don't have a
consistent personality."
I like it. margin.
''The face with which they present
themselves to old friends or strangers.
They are always part of their characters.''
Dislike.
margin.
Ripley is different.
I represented him as a person
who doesn't feel guilt normally.
As if she's a bit she
just doesn't bother him
like she should, or like
she annoys most people.
He should she be the one to say
that I fell in love the day
that I laid eyes on you?
Should he...?
What are you doing?
Nothing, hang out.
Sorry.
take off my clothes
Ripley's sex life is very ambiguous.
He is quite shy and a bit
homosexual, she would say...
Next station, San Remo.
What I'm wondering is: you
don't admire Ripley, do you?
Of course not. But I think...
Well, I hope Ripley is fun.
It seems to people that... Even in the
United States, Ripley is quite popular.
But, of course, he is a murderer.
Yes, but in the end he only kills
when he thinks it's the right thing to do.
Some say that most murders
happen within the family.
I admit that the first
murder of his was very cruel.
The funniest thing is that I don't try to
pretend I'm someone else. And you do.
How boring.
I've been totally honest
with you about my feelings.
And who are you?
A third rate scrounger.
Who are you to tell me anything?
You give me goosebumps.
Shut!
Always ''Dickie, Dickie,
Dickie'' like a little girl.
You shut up.
For! For!
I don't think murder
is my thing. If
someone were to
ask, I'd say it's his fault.
The absence or presence of guilt.
Well, you could also say
that it is the overwhelming
desire to confess, to
fall into your own trap.
That ''OMG, what have I done?''.
It can be a toothache.
While Ripley is very happy with what
he has done, he doesn't give a damn.
and gets away with it. She's great.
Until now. But what
do you plan to do with it?
She will always get her way.
Oh yeah?
He wanted me to
leave New York. I didn't
think it would look
good to him, but he did.
He had a huge black cat.
And I had four cats.
So the seven of us
drove to Pennsylvania.
The cats were in boxes, screeching.
"My girl, my wife, my country wife,
beating my eggs and making my bed,
doing her hair the way she likes it.
Bonfires and branches,
apples and figs,
no phone, no
guests, just our routine
of working, making love
and, who cooks today?
It was easy to love
her, let's put it that way.
Even if it was a sin
to have a female lover.
It was a good sin.
Two women living together. All the world
I would understand that
they would pool their salaries,
because the women did not earn much.
Nobody ever thought they did it for sex.
Some children sometimes
came to the house to chat.
They were children of neighbors.
They came to the back door,
we were making Sunday dinner
and we were kissing.
My goodness, how they ran.
They ran home really
fast and didn't come back.
In a small town where
rumors carry a lot of weight,
there are many people who
ask: ''What did you say? Repeat it.
Have you seen them kiss?
Pat kept diaries, and there was
one that was lost. He thought I had it.
''She was drunk enough to tell
me that she had read my diaries,
which caused her to stop
writing them. Until now, I guess.''
Maybe she did.
Maybe she did, because, well,
I am human.
But there weren't many
opportunities to do so either.
She was also like a cat.
She was not heard when she walked.
That breach of trust
drives Highsmith
to write down her most private
thoughts in notebooks from then on.
She would spend her whole life worrying
about someone reading her journals.
She put warnings and
curses on the front pages.
DO NOT TOUCH ME.
The first thing Pat did
in the morning was work.
She always drank orange
juice in the morning.
And one morning I saw him at the table.
I picked him up to take
him away and he told me:
''What have you got there?''
And I said, "Your juice."
And he said, "Try it."
He was loaded with gin.
So every morning that
she was there working
and doing stuff she
was getting gin thin.
He didn't think someone
who wrote so well
He could put himself in
such a vulnerable position.
''After a very nice dinner,
MJ ran upstairs and said:
'You are drunk. I don't
want no more fights,
Pat'. And we sleep
in separate rooms.''
''Those days melt
into each other.
My drinking scares him,
and I'm terrified of his temper."
She said: ''It's impossible,
we can't live together''.
In the end, we had the
typical breakup. And she left.
Did Pat expect much from love?
We all expect a lot. When
we fall in love, we have
high expectations.
That's what it consists of.
''We have to consider
ourselves a fertile land
in which to draw.
If not, we grow rotten,
like an unmilked cow. And if we let
something untapped,
dies inside us, wasted''.
Writing is a way of
analyzing experiences.
But personal experiences
are quite limited.
Even if you get divorced a couple of
times or something. They are limited.
But, if you use your
imagination, they are limitless.
Highsmith tries to write
another ''girls' book'',
as she calls her lesbian novels,
in which she weaves together the
personal love experiences of her diaries.
''The objective of this book
is to reflect the adult woman
that she fails to avoid the
practice of homosexuality.
It's the story of her own youth, her
selfishness, her idealism, her maturity.''
Highsmith did not finish the manuscript
and she did not publish
any more ''girls' books''.
After a visit to Texas,
she fears that she
will be identified as
the author of ''Carol''.
Her mother talked to the family
pastor about the secret book.
She wrote a letter to her stepfather:
''I never showed that book to my mother.
She found it because I let
you and her stay in my flat.
Wouldn't it occur to any idiot that if
someone wrote a book under a pseudonym
is it because you want to
remain anonymous to the public?
But no, my mother doesn't think of it.''
''I often wonder what my
mother thinks I'm doing wrong.
I have not been in
prison, I do not use drugs,
I have not been divorced, I
have not had illegitimate children,
I make a good living.
I'm even in the Who's Who.
The International, published in London''.
Come on guys.
I don't recall ever
hearing her mother say:
''Have you talked to Pat?
Do you know anything
about her? Do you know
when she will come home?
Those two people in my life were
never in the same room together.
So to think of
them as mother and
daughter and why
she doesn't care,
I never would have happened.
Highsmith hired a lawyer.
She broke all legal ties with her
mother and she ended up disinherited.
''I would like to separate from
my mother, my mother from me,
legally speaking, of any obligation.
It would certainly be a great relief
for me, and I hope for her as well.''
Pat went to London
often, and he met a woman.
It took me years to find one of the
most important women in Highsmith's life.
By the time I found out who she
was, the woman had just passed away.
I will keep her anonymity
and call her ''Caroline''.
It is very important not to
say the name of this woman.
I don't think I've ever
seen pictures of her.
Pat talked about her a lot. Almost always.
''The color comes and goes from her cheeks.
Her brown eyes look directly at me.
And brown is the last color of all
that I would use to try to describe her.
Cream, pink, even white.
What is the color of warmth?
She was married, she
even had children, I think.
I don't even know what this woman is like
physically. I know absolutely nothing.
But apparently it was an
important story in her life.
Her married lover
of hers tried to sneak
away to be with her
in Paris for a few days.
"I will make you a necklace of verses,
one by one, chained quickly.
A thread of time to remember,
to remember those days
to preserve those days forever.
''Paris hit us like lightning,
and, dazzled, we caressed each
other between the stones of Notre Dame,
seeing with the tips of the fingers''.
''Beauty, perfection, completion.
All seen and achieved.
Death is the next territory,
one step to the left.''
"Can I kiss you at some threshold?"
''Already at home. I'm
totally crazy about her
And I have to muster all the courage
and determination that I
have to go forward alone''.
''C.'s letters are... like she's
making love to me writing them.
They make me intoxicated and upset,
and writing to her also has that effect''.
''It is not worth making more efforts
to live without her. I do not can.
And, in my 41 years, I have never
said or written this about anyone.''
"That means England."
It was the first time Highsmith had
moved to another country for a woman.
She bought a country house in a
small English village, near her mistress.
''I can't sleep. It's been
wonderful coming to
London. C. opening
the door in a bathrobe''.
''As she wrote tonight in my
notebook number twenty-six,
in which the last city and the
last country I'm in is Caroline...''.
''The only thing I could wish for:
tranquility, Caroline, cats, the sea.
I am very happy with her. As if she lives
in a dream world, even though she is real.
Harge, what's up?
Any. Can I only visit my
wife if there is a problem?
''Two letters from C.
The difficulties of leading a double life
on the grounds that she is physically ill.
I know she wants to
tell her husband about it.
How do you know my wife?
Please Harge.
"Paris should remain a
secret no matter what."
''I am concerned about her
strong sense of conventionality.
I don't know if C. will be able to
support fast, or even slow, change.
that she would mean a life with me.
We could be discreet forever
but, without a husband, would she be
happy? Could she take on the world?
''The affair with the married woman.
There are those who would
think that she would feel satisfied
with that brief period of time together.
But no one is satisfied with
being an emotional second course.
I miss C so much. I love her in
my days, in my bed, in my life.''
''C. she would eternally prolong this
sadistic relationship that she has with me.
It is not a relationship. She
doesn't flow, she doesn't cheer,
but she wouldn't cut it.
Never. So I have done it.
It was the worst
moment of my entire life.''
"In Paris, when I began to enjoy
existence for existence's sake,
began the beginning of the end for me.''
''I'm getting everything ready
to sell the house in England.
It is something negative.
Maybe like an abortion.''
''I may not be able to love... I want
something romantic, maybe indefinite.
I repeat the pattern of my
mother's semi-rejection towards me''.
"Sometimes I have the
taste of death in my mouth,
These lonely afternoons
In five years, two years, one year,
will i fall flat on my face again
and curse what I
hesitate to call my destiny,
my boss?''
''Mornings are hectic,
like every morning.
In the afternoon, exhausted, I'm done
Tasks. And I am
confronted with myself
and with my not-me once again.
Then I work.
I work like an earthworm
I work like a termite digging a tunnel,
a bridge.
I work for a future that I no longer see.
"Today's decision: never share
a house with anyone again."
This very famous American
novelist has chosen
live in a small French
commune in Montcourt.
Why has she decided to live
in France, Patricia Highsmith?
Is a very quiet site. It's fine here.
The characters in her books
have a lot of contact with people.
But you... You live alone here.
Yes, when I'm alone I think better
and the ideas come by themselves.
When I spend too much
time with others, I feel tense,
very tense, and afterwards
I feel like I'm exhausted.
Don't you think
that living in a house
full of people who
love us is fine too?
Yes, if we find them.
If we find those people
who love us, yes.
This is what he liked.
It's very similar. I have the
impression that it is the same color.
Yes?
I think.
And there the house
is already all covered...
It was like that. All
covered by vegetation.
Where did she write?
Over there. In that room.
Every poet knows that the best images
come when the mind is not very attentive,
when you are busy doing other things.
mechanical things.
Inspiration and ideas
come from the subconscious,
but you have to give the
subconscious freedom of movement.
She always said that she
took breaks during the day.
That she began to daydream.
She even she came to lead those dreams.
This silence. Extraordinary.
To work, you find it very
important to live alone.
I think so.
Why?
For the silence and
for not having to speak.
''The profound indignity
of being interviewed.
It's strange, it
eats away at you''.
I feel like a patient on an
operating table with some disease.
The doctor says, "Take off your clothes."
He becomes very disturbing.
Okay, I'm going to ask a
silly question: are you happy?
In general, yes. Yes, why not?
"Writing is a substitute
for the life that I
cannot live, that it is
impossible for me to live."
To this day, so many movies have
been made based on Highsmith's books,
that she was invited to chair
the jury of the Berlin Film Festival.
Pat Highsmith has ever
been seen at the Film Festival.
That's how we met.
Back then, I was in charge of
production with Ulrike Ottinger,
so I had made the
costumes and participated
and collaborated on the script.
I read that she wanted you to
have the lead role in the Ripley shoot.
There was talk that you
could shoot with a woman.
Then she was bought by others,
because we had the idea
of shooting a pirate movie.
"I did not fall in love
with flesh or blood,
but of an image: the sailor's cap,
that funny mustache, the little bird
perched on the sailor's right shoulder,
and the eyes, confused
but, at the same time, serious.
If I touched you, maybe you would crack
or you would dissolve, like a
dream we try too hard to remember.
How did you find out that
Pat had fallen in love with you?
It was more than friendship,
it could almost be love.
She wrote it to me in a letter.
Yeah, we actually corresponded a lot.
He always knew what he was
doing, or if he had changed publishers,
or if she had sold a book.
All of Highsmith's experiences with Tabea
snuck into Ripley's fourth
novel, "In Ripley's Footsteps."
Like Tabea and Pat, Ripley and the
boy from the book visit Pfaueninsel.
I wish she was a good poet,
she capable of condensing everything
in a clear and beautiful sphere,
like a transparent gem, polished,
something to keep,
something small in the pocket,
something to look at
that she didn't hurt anyone."
Now yes.
How nice.
Majestic, grandiose.
It's not pretty?
Pat asked me if I would
like to go to Montcourt.
I thought about it, but it couldn't be.
I would have been bored in
that lonely house in France.
"There are no memories of pleasure or
pain between the years of such a great love
but it had a sad ending.
He had just broken up
with the famous Tabea.
And he said, "Yes, I'm dying of sadness."
He wasn't able to write anything anymore,
and I think he couldn't sleep either.
It was really, really bad.
For the first time in his
life, Highsmith couldn't write.
After starting the Ripley novel
that he had inspired Tabea,
he falters after writing 50 pages.
It is December 6, 1976.
There is nothing
to fear but fear itself.
I know less and less
who I am
or who are the others.
"The real hell is between the
dream and reality." Do you agree?
Yes, I agree, and I
wrote that sentence years
ago, before I even
thought of writing this book.
Because I feel it myself: it is a
disappointment of what one expects.
But in a way I think it's normal.
I mean, it doesn't necessarily
mean we're going crazy.
Because I think almost everyone
has hope, whether it's in their job,
in their marriage or in something
that doesn't come to fruition.
He wrote me that he loved me very much.
"For the lightness you
have brought into my life."
And he put in brackets: ''With 'lightness'
I mean the absence of heaviness''.
He told me that thanks to
me he was able to write again.
And that he had regained a taste for life.
He finished his book.
And I felt that she saw myself
in the young man in the book.
That was precisely the relationship
between Ripley and this young man.
It was different from previous Ripleys.
There was a nice side.
Ripley didn't have the cynical side of him.
He had softened a bit.
She decided to dedicate the
famous In Ripley's Footsteps to me.
She sent me this letter to ask
me how I preferred the dedication.
And, of course, I accepted ''To
Monique Buffet''. And she was very happy.
It was complicated, because
I had known for a while
to the girl he still lives with.
Therefore, I was between two stories.
He couldn't totally ignore her.
He couldn't, because there was
something very moving about her.
It is very difficult to explain, really.
"I guess tomorrow your
letter will say, 'Well, Pat,
She's been good knowing you for a while
but we'd better stop seeing each other'.
But don't think I'm sad about it.
It's not your fault, and
you shouldn't think about it.''
His departure to Switzerland
was very dramatic.
His tax history.
There was a police raid on his house.
She was truly offended to
be considered a criminal.
She did not want to continue in France.
''Life in Switzerland:
I have the impression that the lack
of sunlight influences people a lot.
I like calm because
inside I'm nervous.''
He often talked about how he
couldn't stand the Swiss winters,
months and months passed
without sun, it was cold.
''I feel like I've fallen
into an unhappy trap.
In those moments I remember Montcourt and
the sunlight... that I will never forget''.
Just a few weeks after selling his
house in France, he wants to buy it back,
but he doesn't get it.
So he stays to build another.
She was very, very proud of her house.
A very modern house.
But she seemed very happy about it.
She never would have thought that one day
she Pat she would have a house like this.
The Bunker.
"It must be strange to walk into a
house and start living in it, fix it up,
knowing that it will be the
last house you will live in''.
I carry old memories with
me like a very heavy suitcase.
I wish I never met this
person or that person,
but I met them, and I don't forget''.
''I've spent two hours
reading my old diaries.
My life is a chronicle
of incredible mistakes.
Things I should have
done, and vice versa.''
By then, Highsmith was making
fewer and fewer entries in his diary,
and in these he began to rant
against Jews, Arabs and blacks.
As if he went back to the racism of
his beloved grandmother in Texas.
''I live my life backwards.
My envy has turned to hate,
and hate, in disdain.
Now you, who know a
freedom that I never knew,
You wonder the reason for my bitterness.
You say I'm full of resentment.
But resentment is my second emotion,
one I knew long before
I knew what to call her.
I know less and less
who I am
or who are the others.
''Writing is the only way to feel
decent,'' Highsmith once said.
Already very ill with leukemia, she
began planning another Ripley novel.
"In some ways, the months
have been fraught with angst."
It would take a thousand
words to describe mental fear.
It is as if, suddenly, Death is
here, and yet no pain is felt.
One talks quietly with
friends and doctors''.
The last chapter of her
famous love story was left open.
Nearly 40 years after her first appearance,
Highsmith decides to abandon anonymity
and publish ''Carol'' under her own name.
A book like Carol , which is
so interesting now for people
who know her work well, is not
only because it is a gay novel,
but because it is also a very positive
gay novel. It has a happy ending.
Yeah, for once the characters
don't commit suicide, or fall
down a sewer or... or slit
their wrists, that's good too.
At least they try to do
something with their lives.
It doesn't mean it will eventually happen.
But at least they try.
In hindsight, that's pretty
unusual for you. You are
not a writer who is
characterized by happy endings.
For much of the novel, it looks
like it's not going to end well.
And suddenly, it takes a turn and
the two women are back together.
Was it a conscious decision
that the novel ended well?
I think so, because...
Yes, he was aware.
It was what she wanted, totally.
Highsmith worked to the end on
a new gay novel, this time openly.
She dies just a few
weeks after it sees the light.
She ends with her last
published words of hers:
"The funniest thing is that
Rickie was quietly happy."
"At dawn, after my death, hours before,
the sunlight will bathe
at seven, as always,
those trees that I know.
Greenery will burst, dark
green shadows will give way
in the sun, indifferent, benign but cruel.
Without crying to me
on the day of my death.
The trees will rest in
the breezeless dawn,
blind and indifferent,
the trees I knew,
whom he cared for.
Elena San Miguel Olivares