Mx Seek

8 Reads

Contains spoilers

the movie and the book are very different, but reading the book made me appreciate the brilliance of the movie and the brilliance of Patricia Highsmith's writing even more.

In the book, after Tom's first meeting with Dickie goes awry, he realizes he shouldn't have said Dickie's dad sent him, and should've made it a much more casual encounter. Much later on after he's killed Dickie, he's reflecting on that and how he wouldn't have had to murder Dickie if he had made a better first impression, and upon realizing he was getting ousted, didn't panic and drag Dickie to art galleries' or things he wasn't really interested in. He also blames Marge calling him a queer for Dickie's sudden coldness.

In the movie, he *does* play it like he just ran into Dickie randomly, and just goes along with everything Dickie says, Marge even likes Tom and she's much more involved with Dickie in the film version, she's even close friends with another gay man showing that she's probably an ally. She reassures Tom and supports him, and he *still* ends up getting ousted and murdering Dickie. (Though, it wasn't premeditated.)

It shows how, even if Tom had done "everything right" he was still a deeply unstable man. The movie also adds a double layer of tragedy with making Peter Smith-Kingsley a much bigger character. I don't doubt that in the original book he was intended to be queer-coded, knowing Patricia Highsmith, Peter inviting Tom to his Irish Castle was probably a (somewhat) discreet way of showing he was interested in Tom.

This book is a masterpiece, the film is a masterpiece as well, but in a different way.

A new all-time favorite for me.

May 22, 2025