Sometimes, the fun of watching a movie has a lot to do with whether the actors seem to have had any fun while making it. Such is the case with Anton Corbijn’s “A Talent for Murder,” in which the great Helen Mirren appears to be having an absolute blast playing Patricia Highsmith, the brilliant, eccentric and famously misanthropic author of such midcentury crime-fiction classics as “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Strangers on a Train.” Her usual glamour hidden beneath baggy menswear and an unfussed-with gray bob, Mirren’s Highsmith smokes as if her cigarette has offended her, drinks like morning won’t come and stretches out her words deliciously; this is a woman who, though she prefers her own company, doesn’t mind holding center stage.

Based on Joanna Murray-Smith’s play “Switzerland” (adapted for the screen by Murray-Smith and entirely fictional, as the movie’s end credits take pains to point out), the film takes place in 1995. Highsmith, an American, now lives alone in rural Switzerland, in her 70s and in poor health. A visitor arrives by train and shows up on her doorstep: Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich), a young editor from Highsmith’s American publisher whose mission is to persuade her to write one last novel featuring her enigmatic murderer Tom Ripley. (That the names “Ridgeway” and “Ripley” share some DNA is no accident.) Though initially resistant, she begins to craft a plot with Ridgeway — and the movie then spins into two parallel stories, both of which have at their center a young man plotting to get what he wants.

It’s a delicious premise whose only problem is that Mirren’s screen time is limited. (Ehrenreich and Olivia Cooke appear in both stories, in different but overlapping roles; Mirren is only in the present one.) Corbijn’s direction is at times a bit odd — he’s got a fondness for shooting his actors in extreme close-up from below, which feels self-consciously gimmicky — but he wisely mostly gets out of the way and lets Mirren and Ehrenreich cross swords, almost literally (there’s a very shiny knife that gets a lot of screen time).

In their scenes together, “A Talent For Murder” becomes an irresistible combination of psychological thriller and examination of writer's block; listen to the insouciant way Mirren’s Highsmith, late at night as they work on the plot, casually orders Ridgeway to off a character himself, as after decades of murders she’s run out of ideas. “If it’s a Highsmith,” she says, drunkenly and forcibly, “we want something elegant, beautiful, unexpected.” Much of “A Talent for Murder” is, indeed, just that.

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'A TALENT FOR MURDER'

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for sexual content, some violence and language)

Running time: 1:46

How to watch: Now in theaters

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