The Two Faces of January Dvd

The Two Faces of January is a 2014 American-British-French thriller film written and directed by Hossein Amini, in his directorial debut. It is based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1964 novel The Two Faces of January and stars Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac.

Filming took place on location in Greece and Turkey, and at Ealing Studios. It premiered in February 2014 in the Berlinale Special Galas section of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival.

Plot

In 1962, con man Chester MacFarland and his wife Colette tour Greece and visit the Acropolis of Athens. There, they meet Rydal Keener who scams tourists while working as a tour guide. The MacFarlands discover that Rydal is an American and invite him to dinner. Rydal, intrigued by the couple’s wealth and Colette’s beauty, accepts their invitation and brings along a girlfriend.

Colette likes Rydal but Chester does not trust him. After dinner, they part but Rydal goes back to their hotel to return a bracelet that Colette left in their shared taxi. Meanwhile, a private detective hired by victims of Chester’s investment swindles goes to the MacFarlands’ hotel room and demands that Chester repay their money. The detective pulls a gun and Chester kills him by accident in a brief struggle when the detective falls and hits his head. While Chester is trying to stow the body in the detective’s hotel room, Rydal finds him in the corridor. Chester asks Rydal for his help, pretending that he found the detective drunk and unconscious in the lobby. When the two of them try to get the dead detective’s body into his hotel room, they are seen by an elderly couple who think that Chester and Rydal are only trying to help a drunk man to get into his hotelroom and so they give them a friendly “Good evening!” In their panic, Colette and Chester hastily pack their suitcases and leave the hotel, without checking out. They also leave their passports behind at the hotel front desk.

Rydal takes the MacFarlands to see a friend who can furnish false passports to replace those they left at the hotel. He suggests waiting for the counterfeit documents in Crete. In the capital city Iraklion, they cannot check into a hotel without identification papers and so they spend the evening at a restaurant where Chester gets drunk while watching Rydal and Colette dance and grow close and they all sleep the night on the quayside. Next morning, they travel by bus to Chania where Colette visits Rydal’s room while her husband sleeps; it is left ambiguous as to whether they have sex. On the way back to Iraklion, Colette believes someone has recognized her from newspaper pictures of the Americans who fled the hotel in Athens and runs off the bus at a stop. Chester and Rydal follow and together they walk to the ruins of Knossos.

It begins to rain and they seek shelter. Chester lures Rydal into an underground labyrinth and knocks him out. As Chester emerges alone from the labyrinth, Colette assumes that he has killed Rydal. She then refuses to go any further with Chester telling him that this is no way to live, fleeing from one part of the world to another, always afraid that they will be found out by the police, especially now two people have been murdered. Chester tries to force her, grabbing her arm, but as she struggles, she loses her balance and falls down the wall that the stairs are built on. Chester rushes down to her but she is dead. He takes her in his arms and cries out in grief.

When Rydal comes to in the morning, he discovers Colette’s dead body and while leaving, is seen by a group of students and their guide. He also discovers Chester’s coat, hat and sunglasses and puts them on. Chester has rushed to Iraklion to pick up the passports paying Rydal’s friend $2,500. Rydal arrives in Knossos and tracks down Chester. The two realize that they are bound together by the detective’s death, the acquisition of false passports and Colette’s death. If either is arrested, he will implicate the other.

As they take the ship back to Athens, they have a conversation while standing at a railing, looking out over the sea. Chester offers Rydal $10,000 to keep him quiet. Rydal then reveals that he “never wanted Chester’s money. He wanted Chester’s wife.” Chester grabs him by the throat and nearly pushes Rydal overboard telling him to never talk about his wife again.

After arriving in Athens, they go to the airport, where Chester pretends to buy them both tickets to Frankfurt. He says he is going for a drink and boards a plane to Istanbul leaving Rydal with a suitcase containing documents that will tie him to Colette. Rydal realizes that Chester has probably reported him to the police anonymously and he flees the airport and appears to have escaped the police.

Rydal locates Chester in Istanbul and calls him from a payphone, demanding a meeting in the Grand Bazaar. He threatens to go to the police unless Chester pays him off, and hangs up. Unbeknownst to Chester, Rydal has already been arrested by the FBI. He has a covert meeting with the FBI agent, who he has made a previous deal with. The agent demands that Rydal extract a confession from Chester or their deal will be off. He makes Rydal wear a wire to his meeting with Chester. At their rendezvous, Rydal’s insistent questioning makes Chester suspicious. Sensing a trap, he flees and a chase through the dark ensues with both Chester and Rydal fleeing the FBI agent and the Turkish police. A policeman shoots Chester who, as he lies dying, speaks into Rydal’s wire tap admitting responsibility for the two deaths and exonerating Rydal. After Rydal is released, he asks the FBI agent where Chester will be buried. He answers that as they haven’t been able to trace any next of kin, Chester will be buried in Istanbul. When the agent asks Rydal why he wants to know, Rydal answers: “I thought I’d go to his funeral”. When he visits Chester’s grave, he buries Colette’s bracelet there at the tombstone.

Cast

Viggo Mortensen as Chester MacFarland
Kirsten Dunst as Colette MacFarland
Oscar Isaac as Rydal Keener
Yigit Ozsener as Yahya
Daisy Bevan as Lauren
David Warshofsky as Paul Vittorio
Omiros Poulakis as Niko