The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999).

http://www.culturevulture.net/Movies/TalentedMrRipley.htm

-  Tom Block


    It isn’t hard for the average moviegoer to understand what it is
that drives the title character of The Talented Mr. Ripley to murder:
the sight of Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow cavorting through the
movie’s Italian locations is enough to make any schlub wonder where
his life went wrong and how far he’d go to change it. Mr. Ripley is
a richly textured and enticingly nasty work about a man who takes
matters into his own hands when he feels passed over by fortune, and
it’s the best Alfred Hitchcock movie made since Alfred Hitchcock died.

    A washroom attendant and a tickler of piano keys at other people’s
social affairs, Tom Ripley (Damon) is locked out of the American Dream
when we meet him. He’s smart enough, God knows (give him a second and
he can think his way out of anything), but he lacks polish and any real
standing. He can see and smell what he’s missing – he’s surrounded
by it, he’s steeped in it – but he can’t quite get his hands on it.
That is, not until he’s hired by a wealthy sailboat manufacturer to
retrieve the man’s dropout son from Europe. When he catches up to
Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) in a seaside Italian village, he’s dazzled
to find a satyr-like golden boy whom God has blessed with good looks,
money, and an obscene sense of self-assurance. Dickie is Tom’s dream
version of himself, a playboy in exile who spends his days carrying on
with his American girlfriend, Marge (Paltrow), and his nights drinking
in the jazz clubs of Naples and Rome.

    Tom wheedles his way into Dickie’s trust – the insidious
impression he performs of the elder Greenleaf subtly poisons the son
against his father – and he soon moves into Dickie’s house, thinking
that he’s found a friend, a home, and a life. But to Dickie he’s
only a stopgap amusement, almost a pet. Dickie’s loyalties are much
more aligned with Freddie Miles (Philip Seymour Hoffman), another
expatriate whose droll sense of privilege causes him to treat Tom as a
punching bag. (Hoffman, who’s been on a roll lately, brings a
perceptible delight to playing this caustic shit.) Worse, Dickie is
sick of Tom’s poverty and his weak-kneed attempts to lure Dickie into
something more than friendship – he wants Tom to disappear back down
the rat-hole he climbed out of.

    His mission a failure, and spurned as a brother, a lover, and even
as a friend, Tom murders Dickie in a spasm of humiliation, unrequited
love, and greed. A grim farce ensues as he tries to convince Dickie’s
acquaintances that Dickie has moved away even as he tries to take
Dickie’s place in life by cashing his checks and occupying his hotel
suites and wardrobe. Marge, Freddie, the Italian police, a textile
heiress (Cate Blanchett), and a private detective all have to be dealt
with, juggled, and manipulated. And Tom’s natural instincts lead him
to a growing involvement with Peter Kingsley-Smith (Jack Davenport),
another member of the ex-pat set. The effort involved in keeping his
legal, sexual, and ethical identities in focus pushes Tom to the
breaking point.

  Mr. Ripley loses a little steam after Tom dispatches Dickie because
Law is so well cast as the bronzed and fickle Dickie, and because the
men’s relationship is so alive and true. (There’s more life and heat
in any one of their scenes together than there is in all of The
English Patient.) But writer-director Anthony Minghella’s conception
of Ripley keeps folding back layer after layer of the character, and
Damon works wonders in the part. The story calls for him to be
constantly mutating in appearance and demeanor, and these changes are
seamlessly wrought – they all emanate from a single source and build
on top of one another. Like Norman Bates, Tom Ripley is a serial
killer for whom identity is a subterfuge, and Damon puts a different
face on every one of his demons.

    Nearly every decision Minghella made pays off – the creation of
an important character who isn’t in Patricia Highsmith’s novel, the
accent on the important role that sex plays in class envy, the
straightforward handling of the gay-themed material. (The atmosphere
has a heavy sexual charge although the movie has a minimum of sex,
either hetero or homo.) The impish xylophone riff that plays when Tom
tells his lies, the extras whose clothes and postures make them look
like escapees from La Dolce Vita, the million little verbal
stratagems by which Tom manipulates everyone around him – all work
together to create a cunning little machine of a movie.

    Minghella’s Tom Ripley is more morally convulsive than
Highsmith’s sleek killer. The movie’s Tom – variously described as
"a quick study," "a dark horse," and "a double agent" – starts out
by killing his enemies but winds up killing his friends, and our rue-
laden final view of him gives the picture its delectable sting. By
the end of the movie the cost of his freedom is skyrocketing, and
while he’d do things differently if he could, he just can’t resist
paying the price. The Talented Mr. Ripley is a seductive hall of
mirrors in which voluptuous desires have consequences that can only
be guessed at.