THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY

Review by Jim Lane
c 1999 Jim Lane
Sacramento News & Review

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/movies/titles/talented_mr_ripley/click.php?review=3


Tom Ripley is the charming, utterly amoral and lethally dangerous
protagonist of a series of novels by the late Patricia Highsmith
("Strangers on a Train"). In each of the books Highsmith, who claimed
to be bored by the obsession with "justice" - poetic or otherwise -
in conventional fiction, coolly followed Ripley through a series of
exploits, observing without comment his ruthlessness in dealing with
those who might keep him from living the life he wanted.

The first of Highsmith's Ripley novels, "The Talented Mr. Ripley"
was filmed in French in 1960 as "Purple Noon", with Alain Delon
suavely androgynous as Ripley. Hired by a wealthy tycoon to persuade
the tycoon's wastrel son to come home from Europe and settle down,
Ripley instead falls in love with the young man's footloose
expatriate lifestyle and decides to murder him and assume his
identity. Now Anthony Minghella, in his first film since the
remarkable "The English Patient", has filmed the novel again, with
Matt Damon as Ripley, Jude Law as the object of his murderous envy,
and Gwyneth Paltrow as the woman caught between them.

The film is set in Italy in 1958. The country, mostly recovered from
the ordeal of World War II, is a sunny, hospitable playground for
wealthy Americans like Dickie Greenleaf (Law), and Tom Ripley finds
himself enamoured of Dickie's free-wheeling, jazz-loving life.

In fact - in a homoerotic strand much more explicit than in either
Highsmith's novel or the 1960 film - Ripley becomes enamoured of
Dickie himself. In Minghella's hands, when Ripley murders Dickie
halfway through the film, it's no longer a cool-headed career move
but a hysterical reaction to Dickie's spurning of his advances. It's
a change in character for Tom Ripley calculated to make him more
sympathetic (he didn't mean to hurt anybody, things just got out of
hand) while making the film appear bold and courageous (Will Hunting/
Private Ryan playing a homosexual).

Minghella gives the film an atmosphere of Mediterranean decadence
where the dazzling light is counterpointed by the sinister impulses
under the surface of the characters. The film is an intriguing
contradiction: a sun-drenched film noir. But as the plot becomes
more involved, as Ripley frantically improvises to cover his tracks,
Minghella seems to lose the thread of his story and begin improvising
himself. The ending is neither the scot-free escape of Highsmith's
book nor the ironic trap of the 1960 film; instead, Minghella leaves
Ripley's fate open and unresolved; the film doesn't really end, it
just stops.

Damon, Law, and Paltrow all respond to Minghella's expertise and the
web of treachery and betrayal that ensnares their characters. They
are the firm core of the story, but the film is quietly stolen out
from under them by two supporting performances. Cate Blanchett, as
an aging debutante trying to hide her loneliness under a Bryn Mawr
accent and a pose of ennui, is sad and sexy, sweet yet too needy for
her own good. And Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a snide sidekick to
Dickie Greenleaf, the kind of chubby sycophant who hangs around
hoping to score with the women Dickie attracts. The characters are
shrewdly written and played - each of them, in different ways,
victims along with Dickie of Mr. Ripley's talents.