Highsmith’s Legacy

Patricia Highsmith has a lot to answer for.

Last weekend I stumbled across a remarkable French film called Harry, He’s Here to Help (2000) written by Dominik Moll and Gilles Marchand and directed by Dominik Moll [French title: Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien]. I set my alarm for 2:05 a.m. Sunday morning to catch this movie, which was described thusly:

A cheap car, a sweltering day, and the rising stress of a family on a long holiday drive. Stopping in a service station, the father, Michel (Lucas), cools off in the lavs, where he meets Harry (López), who claims, Mr Ripley-style, to be an old school friend. Soon Harry and his girlfriend Plum (Guillemin) are staying with Michel and his wife, Claire (Seigner), in their country retreat. A wealthy playboy, Harry works himself into the family by buying them a new car--simply solving a problem he calls it. After the car, however, Harry’s problem-solving techniques include murder. Harry, He’s Here to Help is darkly funny and gently disturbing, including elements that wouldn’t be out of place in Chabrol, Hitchcock or Coen brothers movies. Writer-director Moll presents the story persuasively. Ominous noises and unsettling hints effectively build the tension, while the plot is consistently tight and restrained.

In reviews this little-known movie is described as a “Hitchcockian” thriller in the vein of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley--but with only an occasional mention of Patricia Highsmith, who actually wrote the novels based on those films that precede Harry (and in my opinion clearly influenced the French team behind Harry, He’s Here to Help). Since I’m a huge fan of Highsmith’s work, this made me sad. I wish the younger generation of crime-fiction readers would go back to discover the beauty and terror in her work.

To learn more about Dominik Moll, and to find an interview with this interesting writer/director, click here.

In a 2000 Cannes interview, Moll explains the genesis of Harry, He’s Here to Help:

Moll says that the idea for the film came to him while he and his girlfriend were in the throes of young parenthood.

“There always comes a time when you can’t take anymore and you wonder aloud, ‘How the hell did I get myself into this mess?’ I wondered what would happen if a character suddenly came into my life who externalised all my doubts and frustrations and pursued them to their logical conclusion.”

I guess I just love books and films with characters who exhibit psychopathic tendencies. When evil is banal and ordinary it’s often scarier, because you can’t see the danger until it’s too late. Add a pact and a twist of amorality, and you get a really chilling experience.

My father (now retired) was an eminent psychiatrist. From him I learned a great deal about how the mind can malfunction. He often warned me about the psychopaths who lurk in our midst. So I was most amused to read this piece from the British Psychoanalytical Society, which dissected the film, and which indicated that there also seems to be a homosexual subtext in the plot.

The film’s manifest content can be seen as a thriller involving a psychopathic Harry, with a homosexual fixation on Michel, who decides to go on a killing spree in order to “help” or control Michel. However, a psychoanalytic interpretation reveals the allegorical nature of the film. From the beginning, Harry can be seen as an unconscious force. Indeed, he even has another name, Dick. He is Tom, Dick and Harry, everyone and no-one at the same time. When Harry explains that he always swallows a raw egg after making love in order to maintain his virility, it may also be that he does so in order to regenerate himself, in order to exist and take on the “appearance” of Harry. In fact, he only exists through others. He has come to life, taken on a human form and there is no stopping him now.

This psychosexual theme is not uncommon with thrillers of this nature. Read any of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley thrillers and you’ll see homoerotica hidden between the interactions of Ripley and the men he “helps.”

Harry, He’s Here to Help is a remarkable film and one that I would urge you to seek out on DVD--or, like me, on late-night TV (but see it with subtitles, not the dubbed print). I guarantee it will lurk in your mind for a long, long time and might even alter the way you look at life and the people with whom you interact.

Two other overlooked by worthwhile films that feature pacts with Faust and characters who have no morality are George Sluizer’s Spoorloos (1988; English title: The Vanishing). Another is the wonderfully amoral Bad Influence (1990), directed by Curtis Hanson. Others that had their moments and featured charming psychopaths: Single White Female, Pacific Heights, Six Degrees of Separation, and the film that launched the word “Bunny Boiler” into modern vernacular, Fatal Attraction.

But remember: when someone you don’t know offers to help you, look carefully into their eyes for the vacancy that a psychopath like Harry exhibits. If you ever meet someone like Harry, be afraid--very afraid--because the human condition can be dangerous.