The Cry of the Owl

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Regular readers may be aware of my fondness for Patricia Highsmith’s particular brand of domestic noir. Last year I read and loved Deep Water (1957), a novel which plays with readers’ responses towards an outwardly respectable man who secretly harbours psychopathic tendencies. It remains one of the highlights of my 2017 year in reading. Then there is Greg, a man who seems hell-bent on removing Robert from the equation – not just figuratively but literally too.

I am one of those people who believes that all good scary/thriller movies and books have one thing in common that makes them so scary: They could happen to you. Robert remembered that he had made himself a second drink during her harangue, a good stiff one, since the wisest thing to show under the circumstances was patience, and the liquor acted as a sedative. His patience that evening had so infuriated her, in fact, that she later lurched against him, bumped herself into him in the bedroom when he was undressing for the night, saying, ‘Don’t you want to hit me, darling? Come on, hit me, Bobbie!’ Curiously, that was one of the times he’d felt least like hitting her, so he’d been able to give a quiet ‘No’ in answer. Then she called him abnormal. ‘You’ll do something violent one day. Mark my words.’ (pp. 49-50)I don't want to give away any more than I already have. Suffice to say, people lie, people cry, and people die. The two protagonists meet in a most unconventional way (Robert is lurking outside of Jenny's window at night watching her in her kitchen as she cooks, etc.) and they become friends! I mean, who would think this up???? High smith, of course!

The actors are excellent and the cinematography by Luc Montpellier adds to the haunting creepiness of the film. Jeff Daniels' minimal music score underlines the tension. Before watching this film, remind your self that you are dealing with Patricia Highsmith's brand of mystery and the film will be more appreciated. Talk about PSYCHOLOGICAL... I think this is just about as psychological as a Thriller can get, unless of course you venture into Horror territory where you have masterful films like 'SESSION 9', for example. The characters are well portrayed. When Julia Styles and Paddy first meet it is amazing; I would think that it would be very DIFFICULT to do a scene like that and be CONVINCING, enough to draw the audience into the story as much as it did. And then, when you first meet Paddy's almost ex-wife... Talk about a mind-bender. You are seeing some absolutely first rate writing, directing, and acting here, let me tell you...Questo, come molti altri romanzi di Highsmith, non ha alcun interesse per il classico whodunnit (chi è stato) dei thriller. Ma si direbbe che neppure i perché la interessino molto. Il suo obiettivo non è lo spavento, e neppure la paura: ma l’ansia, l’inquietudine. Without spoilers, about two thirds of the way through the novel things get even darker than that, and the drama becomes more like a Greek tragedy, begins looking like the disastrous outcome of a single, questionable act--as if the theme were simply fate, or fatality, and human powerlessness in a social world self-righteously obsessed with judgement. An act that is not in-and-of itself truely bad, but is understandably(!) misinterpreted by everyone on the outside and therefore leads to nothing short of disaster for everyone involved. In the end, The Cry of the Owl reminded me of no other novel so much as Camus's L'Etranger--the theme of which is "a white, Christian Algerian can get away with randomly shooting a Muslim Algerian, but you will not escape punishment if you don't cry at your own mother's funeral." I will leave this similarity between the two novels here in code so as not to spoil the plot of The Cry of the Owl for you if you haven't read it yet. You should. It's a quite satisfying American existentialist noir read.