Hitchcock on Holiday  |   Robert Horton

http://www.film.com/film-review/1999/13081/18/default-review.html


We have heard a lot about how Matt Damon, not a beefy man to begin
with, lost 25 pounds to play the title character in The Talented Mr.
Ripley. So far I am unaware of anyone saying why Damon lost the
weight, beyond journalists trying to convey the very serious approach
Mr. Damon takes toward his craft. Regardless of intent, the stunt is
effective: this Ripley has a properly lean and hungry look, a young
man starved for attention and affection. When occupying screen space,
Ripley is, appropriately, there and not there. Damon's performance,
and his physical slightness, also suggest a childlike quality; this
Ripley is less a criminal mastermind than a kid who knows how to
think his way out of trouble.

In adapting the Patricia Highsmith novel (previously filmed by Rene
Clement as Purple Noon, with Alain Delon memorable in the lead role),
director Anthony Minghella has improvised his way out of a few tight
spots of his own. Like a jazzman noodling on a classic, Minghella
roves freely in his adaptation -- including the addition of jazz
itself as a running theme. For instance, the opening gambit: Tom
Ripley, now a classical piano player in 1958 New York, does not have
any connection to the wandering socialite Dickie Greenleaf (Jude
Law). In the book, the two men were friends at Princeton; in the
movie, Tom is approached by Dickie's parents when they see him
wearing a (borrowed) Princeton blazer. Mr. Greenleaf hires Ripley to
sail off to Italy and retrieve Dickie from la dolce vita, but
instead Ripley falls in love with the Italian sun, hedonism, and
Dickie himself.

When Highsmith's Ripley fell in love with Dickie, it was a kind of
schoolboy crush, mixed up with uncertainty and a strong sense that
he wanted to become Dickie-which, soon enough, he would. Minghella's
version is more overtly gay. Whether this adds anything significant
to the story is debatable, since some of Ripley's behavior now reads
as simple lover's spite. Other Minghella additions include an
Italian girl carrying on an affair with Dickie at the same time he
romances the upper-class Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), and a globe-
trotting American (Cate Blanchett) whose path keeps crossing
Ripley's wayward trajectory.

Highsmith devotees can discuss the merits of these alterations. What
Minghella has arrived at, however, is a worthy follow-up to The
English Patient, and another seductive parade of beautiful surfaces.
Although it feels too long for its purposes, The Talented Mr. Ripley
catches a lovely sense of floating lives, and the re-creation of a
particular time and place is pretty luscious. Minghella also
displays a nifty feeling for traditional suspense. There's a
wonderful moment when Ripley appears to be caught red-handed in his
elaborate masquerade -- you can see the air draining out of Damon's
body -- only to recharge himself seconds later.

Among the film's other movie-movie pleasures are the bit parts. The
interesting choices include James Rebhorn as Dickie's father; it
would have been easy to cast this part with a fatcat, but Rebhorn's
homely persona suggests not a Social Register, Ivy League type but a
self-made man -- perhaps that's why he identifies with Tom Ripley.
Sergio Rubini has a quirky blankness as a Rome police inspector, and
Philip Seymour Hoffman is fittingly repulsive as Dickie's snobby
friend. Taken together, the movie's a lollipop, but Minghella (here
and in The English Patient) does have a strong sense of what happens
when handsome surfaces finally crack. The Talented Mr. Ripley may be
Hitchcock on holiday, but that's a perfectly enjoyable vacation.