A perfect cast, unconventional turns, dark surprises

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By Steven Rea
Philadelphia Inquirer
Published: 1999/12/24


The Talented Mr. Ripley is a movie about lies. Living them, becoming
them, being ensnared by them and, just maybe, having them set you
free. A near-perfect adaptation of, and variation on, Patricia
Highsmith's 1955 novel (turned into a pretty fine French psychodrama,
Rene Clement's 1960 Purple Noon, with Alain Delon as Ripley), this
sumptuous production, which drops down on New York, Rome, Naples and
Venice, is as dark and troubling as its principal setting, an idyllic
Italian beach town, is sun-drenched and dazzling.

From the opening credit sequence, with Gabriel Yared's jazzy score
and titles that recall Hitchcock's Vertigo, the film, which opens
Saturday, hooks you in. Tom Ripley (Matt Damon - showing those pearly
whites, but also showing surprising breadth and depth, acting-wise) is
a pauper poseur, an outsider who, by accident and deceit, manages to
insinuate himself into the lives of a fast-moving circle of young
American expatriates. The place is called Mongibello, the time is 1958
and 1959 (La Dolce Vita years), and Tom has been dispatched by a
concerned, and wealthy, father to persuade one Dickie Greenleaf (Jude
Law) to return home to the States.

Instead, Tom befriends the bronzed and rather blase Dickie - a sax-
playing bebop aficionado - and Dickie's girlfriend, the beautiful
Marge Sherwood (the beautiful Gwyneth Paltrow). There are late nights
of cheerful boozing, late breakfasts on a sun-mottled terrace
overlooking the sea, jaunts to the cities, sails on Dickie's boat
(Bird - named for Charlie Parker).

And always there are lies: Tom's college days, Tom's family, Tom's
plans for the future. We watch Damon's Ripley - with his mix of
awkwardness and charm, his knack for mimicry and his puppy-dog
eagerness - and we see a man desperate to reinvent himself, desperate
for friendship and love, and, as The Talented Mr. Ripley unwinds, just
plain desperate.

Anthony Minghella, who brought a similar cinematic sweep to his Oscar-
winning adaptation of The English Patient (Ripley is less epic, but no
less beautiful), has made important changes to the Highsmith book. The
filmmaker introduces two new characters: Meredith Logue (Cate
Blanchett), a sort of distaff counterpart to Ripley's outsider-
wanting-in, and Peter Smith-Kingsley (Jack Davenport), an Englishman
who comes to represent Ripley's own homoerotic yearnings. (The gay
subtext of Highsmith's book has been de-subbed for the film - the
attraction Ripley feels toward Dickie isn't only about envy and
camaraderie.)

The cast, from Damon on down, is pitch-perfect. Law plays the idle,
impulsive Yank with lived-in assurance. Paltrow, alternately blithe
and bemused, shows her stuff in a chilling confrontation toward the
picture's end. Blanchett is buoyant and a little bit sad. And Philip
Seymour Hoffman (soon to be seen in Paul Thomas Anderson's deft,
daring Magnolia) shows up as a hale and hearty college chum whose
presence proves particularly vexing for Tom.

The Talented Mr. Ripley takes startling - and startlingly unpleasant -
turns. This is not a film with anything approximating a conventional
ending. Shot in widescreen Technicolor hues evocative of Hollywood's
halcyon days, the film satisfies, and surprises. It presents a hero -
or antihero - who demands your sympathy, even as you become
increasingly alarmed that you are willing to give it.