Anyone conversant with the novels and short stories of Patricia Highsmith will likely scratch their heads when pondering the title of the new documentary, “Loving Highsmith.” Is there a literary figure for whom love matters less as a thematic motif? Dip a toe into any Highsmith book and you can’t help but be swept up into a world markedly absent of moral bearing or philosophical purpose. Love is a feeble presence when caprice, avarice, and a casual disregard for life are the rule.

This proves as true for the fraught relationship between Carol Aird and Therese Belivet in “The Price of Salt” as it does for the innumerable machinations of Tom Ripley, the oiliest of psychopaths and Highsmith’s most famous creation. Fans of “The Price of Salt,” later retitled “Carol,” may disagree, pointing out that the once infamous “girl’s book” is the lone Highsmith novel with, if not a happy ending per se, a sense of hope. Still, the claustrophobic-bordering-on-discursive manner in which Highsmith set down her prose can’t help but leave the reader unsettled.