Brilliantly unsettling

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By Jay Boyar
Orlando Sentinel
Published: 12/24/99


Who wants to be a millionaire?

Tom Ripley, that's who. He wants it truly, madly, deeply -- the way
a starving man wants a full-course dinner.

But it's not the money that Tom yearns for so much as the social
status, the lifestyle -- in a word, the class. This nerdy young man
wants to be one of the beautiful people instead of what he actually
is:

A New York City washroom attendant.

In The Talented Mr. Ripley -- which is set in the late '50s -- Tom
(Matt Damon) doesn't have Regis to help him chase his dream. But he
does have a lifeline -- a shipbuilding tycoon named Herbert Greenleaf,
whom he meets by chance and who takes a shine to him.

Greenleaf offers Tom $1,000 to go to Europe to convince his wayward
son, Dickie, to stop living la dolce vita and to return home.

It's not a million bucks, but it's a start. And not just for Tom, but
for everyone in this superb -- and profoundly unsettling -- motion
picture.

Part thriller, part romance, part meditation on class, The Talented
Mr. Ripley is based on the 1955 novel by Patricia Highsmith that also
inspired the 1960 French film Purple Noon.

Writer-director Anthony Minghella has fashioned, here, a subtle,
difficult film that should be approached with extreme caution. In
fact, the movie probably ought to carry a label.

Warning: Prolonged exposure to this production may result in your
learning something about yourself that you might prefer not to know.

What you may learn is this: Even if you think you don't care about
class, you probably do.

Maybe you care because you secretly want to join the snobs. Or maybe
you care because you want to shove the snobs' snobbishness back down
their throats -- and the only way to do that is to beat them at their
own game.

Tom cares so much about that game that he's willing to do absolutely
anything to win it.

We find out just how far he is willing to go in Europe, where Tom
catches up with Dickie (Jude Law) and his girlfriend, Marge Sherwood
(Gwyneth Paltrow), on a gorgeous beach. Pretending to have been at
Princeton with Dickie, Tom quickly attempts to ingratiate himself
into their charmed and charming lives.

If Tom, who wears clunky glasses and looks almost ugly at times,
wanted to be part of this kind of scene before he met Dickie and
Marge, afterward he's desperate to join. A golden power couple, they
are well aware of their prerogatives and know just how to go about
enjoying their fortunate lives.

They take Tom sailing, wine him and dine him. Dickie, a jazz
enthusiast, even invites him along on a musical spree.

This section of the film is heady stuff -- not only for Tom, but for
us as well. Taking his cue from the liveliness of the music itself,
filmmaker Minghella (The English Patient; Truly, Madly, Deeply) spins
seductive riffs on the theme of carefree, elite youth.

For Tom, of course, this party can only go on for so long. He's living
off Dickie's father's money, plus whatever Dickie himself kicks in.

When the kindness of these recent acquaintances runs out, it'll be
back to New York and the washroom for Tom. But before that can happen,
The Talented Mr. Ripley (which opens Saturday) begins to show its dark
colors as a thriller.

One terrible day, in a fit of frustration and confusion, Tom and
Dickie quarrel violently. Then, using his considerable talent for
impersonation, Tom assumes his former friend's identity.

"I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real
nobody," he confesses.

From here on in, the movie becomes an elaborate cat-and-mouse game --
or perhaps I should say cats-and-mouse game. Improvising constantly,
Tom attempts to stay one step ahead of not only the police but also of
Marge and of Tom's other friends.

What makes this film so disturbing is that we sometimes find ourselves
rooting for the criminally opportunistic Tom. We know that's wrong,
and yet, like him, we don't want the party to end.

One reason for that is the beautiful photography.

Working with cinematographer John Seale (The English Patient),
Minghella glides from Venice to Tuscany to Rome to Naples to Palermo
to the islands of Ischia and Procida in the Bay of Naples. It's easy
enough to see why Tom doesn't want to give all this up, only to have
to return to his porcelain prison.

Then there are the performances, which are uniformly brilliant, and
which help to shape our responses.

As the talented Tom, Damon at first engages our pity more than
anything else. The character is so obviously outclassed by Dickie and
the others that you can't help feeling sorry for him.

Later, when it turns out that Tom is secretly in love with one of the
characters, your pity deepens into embarrassment at the impossibility
of his desires. And later still, when things go very badly, the
embarrassment curdles into a sad revulsion.

Playing Dickie, the tan, blond Jude Law (Gattaca) is like a young god:
beautiful, hedonistic and casually arrogant. In part, it's this
arrogance that draws Tom to him -- and helps to explain why Tom turns
against him.

Philip Seymour Hoffman (Flawless), as Jude's old friend, Freddie Miles,
is even more arrogant than Dickie. And he's humorous in his contempt
for Tom, whose number he has from the get-go.

Dickie and Freddie have an easy rapport that the newcomer must realize
he can never share. Tom has more luck with Marge, whom Paltrow portrays
as the most self-aware member of the group, and arguably the nicest.
Marge aspires to be a writer and Paltrow projects a writer's
consciousness.

Rounding out the principal cast are Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth) and Jack
Davenport (Career Girls).

As the young American heiress Meredith Logue, Blanchett brilliantly
captures a clueless sort of elitism that wears a sweet face. Trivial
and foolish, Meredith has everything she could ever want and yet she
understands nothing.

Davenport, meanwhile, plays Peter Smith-Kingsley, a rich, decent,
homosexual character. Part of Peter's function, here, may be to defuse
the sort of politically correct criticism that is apt to arise because
Tom, the "bad guy," is gay. Davenport's gentle-spirited performance
affirms that Tom's problem is not a function of his sexuality.

Will The Talented Mr. Ripley be a hit? I hope so, but, frankly, I
doubt it.

Despite a few glittery names in the cast, and despite the fact that
the film is nominally a thriller, this is the sort of challenging
character study that typically only reaches a small audience -- unless
it wins awards.

Minghella's last movie, The English Patient (1996), was, in fact, an
award-winner. But that was a very different case.

In that one, the filmmaker created a world of privilege and then
invited us to join him in it for a two or three hours. He treated the
film's audience, in other words, the way Dickie and Marge first treat
Tom.

Apparently flattered by the invitation, the motion-picture academy
responded with its best-picture prize.

With his latest production, however, the filmmaker is, in a sense,
showing his hand. He's exposing his awareness that class can be used
to manipulate a situation.

What Minghella is doing in the new film is ultimately more naked and
complex -- and, therefore, more perilous -- than anything he has ever
attempted before. A filmmaker must be astonishingly confident -- even
foolhardy -- to make a movie like The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Minghella is certainly all of that, not to mention talented.