'Mr. Ripley' shows many faces of deceit

http://www.jsonline.com/enter/movies/reviews//dec99/m.rip24122399.asp

By Duane Dudek
Journal Sentinel film critic
Last Updated: Dec. 23, 1999


"The Talented Mr. Ripley" earned his money the old-fashioned way -
through violence and deceit.

Beneath his sandy-haired, clean-cut countenance lurks the shadow of
a sociopath that emerges when crossed, contradicted or denied. Baby-
faced Matt Damon plays this boy-next-door turned predator with the
toothy eagerness of an all-American archetype on automatic pilot.

What he is is more clear than who he is. His soft features can be
remade into another's likeness. He has a gift for mimicry and forgery.
He is a muddy pool that reflects the desires of others, a vessel that
holds whatever someone else puts in it. He is like a psychological
echo and an emotional chameleon.

At first, his only crime seems to be a need to belong and be loved. A
case of mistaken identity by a man who thinks he's a son's classmate
finds him traveling to Italy to bring the spoiled affluent youth back
to America.

The youth, played by Jude Law, and his girlfriend, played by Gwyneth
Paltrow, are the children of privilege: beautiful by birth, rich by
trust fund and golden from the Mediterranean sun. Damon poses as a
former classmate and soon finds himself on the periphery of their
self-indulgent world - trusted but not accepted, inside the manor but
using the servants' entrance, a diversion.

When his welcome wears thin, Damon lashes out to retain the lifestyle
to which he has become accustomed. After this desperate impulse, which
may or may not have been predetermined, he spends each waking moment
inches from being discovered by acquaintances who mistake him for
someone else, by strangers he misleads and by authorities
investigating his crimes. He does not flee confrontation, he runs
toward it, a gesture central to his psychology and which lends writer-
director Anthony Minghella's film a good deal of tension.

Minghella adapted "The Talented Mr. Ripley" from the novel by Patricia
Highsmith, and it is his first film since the Oscar-winning "The
English Patient." The material here is somewhat inferior but, like his
character, it is not for lack of trying to turn it into something
else. The period setting, the exotic locales and the one-lie-leads-to-
another and hide-in-plain-sight themes suggest Alfred Hitchcock's "To
Catch A Thief," "Rope" and "Psycho." (Not coincidentally, Hitchcock
filmed Highsmith's novel, "Strangers On A Train.")

"Ripley" the novel was written in 1955, and is remembered not just as
a thriller but for its use of Tom Ripley as a metaphor for the
persuasive techniques of fiction itself. These days, the culture is
awash in psychological misfits, and the glib, freckled Tom Ripley
seems like just another strain.

Damon's elastic and layered characterization unfolds to reveal a
vague core. In the end, he is unmasked, disappointingly, as the sum
total of all of his lies. Minghella's warm Italian landscapes,
passionate jazz music subplot and noose-tightening techniques
heighten this tale but do not transform it.




Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Dec. 24, 1999.