Ripley's' lack of depth

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By David Elliott
Union-Tribune Movie Critic
December 23, 1999


"The Talented Mr. Ripley" strives for disturbing depth and subtle
sophistication, and it has that on the surface. But it finally seems
about as facile and sidewinding as its main character.

Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) wants the plush life -- the carefree, easy-
spending life of the rich, cultured and connected he's seen up-close
as a Princeton piano tuner and then working in New York.

He strikes people as a shade gauche but swift, a gem of potential
(for sensitivity, he plays Bach on the piano). His smiling, beaverish
pluck wins the instant favor of Herb Greenleaf (James Rebhorn), a
rich killjoy who sends Tom to Italy to retrieve his wandering, jazz-
mad, sensualist son, Dickie (Jude Law).

Italy's good life is la dolce vita (it's 1958, the year before Fellini
made the fabled film). Tom, who has a certain flair for mimicry and
assimilation, slips with his slightly dorky charm into Dickie's
circle. Naples, Rome, San Remo and Venice are their playgrounds, in a
great time for travel, fashion, jazz and the American dollar.

Law, in the film's best performance, has golden hair, a Capri tan and
an aura of ripeness ready to rot. Dickie, a spoiled playboy in his
prime, makes his intimates feel more alive, though they're wary of
his rude tantrums and switches of favor. His lust for jazz is both
hipster veneer and real passion (though as music critic George Varga
pointed out to me, a glowering Miles Davis LP shows up a few decades
too soon).

An Italian girl kills herself over Dickie, setting the emotional
stage for further violence that, sadly, removes Law from the picture.
Now Tom is free to emulate and simulate, to fill his inner emptiness
with a glamorous if schizzy life -- he can fake it as dashing Dickie
while dodging for cover into trite Tom. This does not fool Dickie's
craftiest friend (Philip Seymour Hoffman, a tankard of acid) or, for
very long, the gentle beauty who wanted to marry Dickie, Marge.

Not the whole story?

You feel sorry for Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge, even though she is
gorgeous, superbly dressed, acts as well as ever and suffers only
glancing competition from Cate Blanchett as an additional expatriate
beauty (one of director and adapter Anthony Minghella's "improvements"
on Patricia Highsmith's novel). But the women are decorative; the
erotic energy coursing through the plot is between the males.

Dickie seems straight, yet only toys with adoring women between his
campaigns to impress envious men (sex with Marge is "Marge
maintenance"). Tom, the plebian prince of envy, humidly desires Dickie
in a bathtub scene. Despite wolfish remarks about women, Hoffman's
character has a guy high for Dickie and is furiously resentful of Tom,
not Marge. And Minghella has beefed up the part of Peter (Jack
Davenport), a suave Brit who signals his yen for Tom with lingering
glances, hugs and remarks about Renaissance gays.

With all that buzzy back-text flirting forward, it's hard to take very
seriously the frontal text about identity, class roles and artful
deception. This tends to neutralize the women, while giving the men a
lot of time to look hunky and wear towels. Is Minghella, like Tom
Ripley, caught in a pampered game of pretend?

"The Talented Mr. Ripley" is destined, like Minghella's more truly
romantic "The English Patient," to be overrated yet not ignored. It is
not a bore, has ravishing scenery, sets ups clever surprises. But this
is coffee-table drama. It feels like someone sitting in a swank bar,
browsing through Henry James while doodling Hitchcock's profile on a
napkin.

Movies of this deluxe type are too busy trying to impress viewers to
ever quite bother convincing them (in "To Catch a Thief," Hitchcock
served up Riviera fluff beyond any need for plot conviction). And
there is a central limit here: Matt Damon.

His Euro polishing never quite takes. Tom remains a cowlick craving
brilliantine. There are some tricky vocal touches (dubbed?) and an
improved wardrobe, but it's still Matt Damon being boyish and wired.
I hate to mention it, Matt, but your pal Ben Affleck might have been
better in the role, making it more than a Ripley's Believe It or Not
in which Tom gets a fairly easy ride from slow cops, gullible clerks
and cynical concierges.

Near the end, Philip Baker Hall shows up as a plot device, a gruff
Yank detective who announces flatly, "I don't care for b.s." He then
launches into a spree of b.s. that is either (depending on your mood)
the film's smoothest twist or its silliest nonsense.