The Talented Mr. Ripley

http://mrshowbiz.go.com/reviews/moviereviews/movies/TheTalentedMrRipley_1999.html

--Michael Atkinson


So sumptuous, ravishing, and effortlessly enjoyable it feels more
like a champagne bath than a movie, Anthony Minghella's The Talented
Mr. Ripley is a near-perfect confection, a beautifully executed
Hollywood all-you-can-eat salad bar of glamour, plot twists,
breathtaking Mediterranean vistas, and jazz. Adapted from Patricia
Highsmith's comparatively creepy novel (already filmed by Rene
Clement as 1960's Purple Noon, with an icily limpid Alain Delon in
the lead), Minghella's movie emerges from a monstrous publicity
thicket to fulfill nearly every promise of its homogenized hype —
except originality, depth, or a respect for genre. Highsmith's novel
is modest pulp with a dark heart, but Minghella films it as if it
were Proust, lingering and luxuriating, and buffing every image like
a priceless gold watch. If you expect films to visually complement
and/or express their themes, don't look to Minghella, for whom every
landscape is a call to romance — even in a film about a sociopathic
murdering spree. The results, however thrilling and expertly
contrived, feel touristy, with none of Purple Noon's raw immediacy
and effectively commonplace use of exotic Italian locales.

Inappropriate beauty and vacation porn won't bother most people,
however, and in every other respect Ripley is impeccably crafted:
Minghella never drops the ball, cuts the movie like a diamond, and
elicits winning performances across the board. The Mr. Ripley of the
title (a bespectacled, monogrammed-jacket-wearing Matt Damon) is a
young '50s dilettante who is asked by a millionaire shipbuilder
(James Rebhorn) to track down and retrieve his prodigal son Dickie
(Jude Law), who is pissing away his trust fund by living high on the
hog in Southern Italy. Once the two meet, Ripley becomes Dickie's
hedonistic buddy and the bottom corner of a triangle that also
includes Dickie's girl Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow); Ripley even
confesses his mission, and conspires with Dickie to keep things jake
and the money coming. Soon enough trouble blooms in paradise and,
following a tragic squabble in a rowboat, Dickie vanishes, and
Ripley appropriates his identity for fun and profit — having had a
taste of the high life, he's very clearly loathe to give it up. Of
course, the quicksand begins to suck, and Ripley's latent amorality
is given a good run as the lies, deceptions, and bodies continue to
mount up.

The Talented Mr. Ripley works and works well, but it works in a way
that is enjoyable without being admirable. It's a movie designed to
impress and distract, yet the self-importance of every shot screams
Art, just as Minghella's fractured but sweeping The English Patient
sold viewers on an artistic achievement that wasn't really there.
That Ripley is acted to the teeth — particularly by a nicely fanged
supporting cast including Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cate Blanchett
as hilariously ugly Americans — is incontestable. Damon is
characteristically outstanding (is he capable of a bad line reading,
or a misjudged moment?), while Paltrow and Law are more valuable
here for their physical beauty than their acting chops. (Law, in
particular, has to seem like the most attractive person on the
planet, and does he ever.) That Minghella brought Highsmith's
homosexual subtext to the surface has been given a great deal of lip
service, but it's as incidental as the Mediterranean vistas and
iconic jazz score. In fact, like a plate of truffles, the whole film
is incidental — but damned good going down.


--Michael Atkinson

Copyright c2000. Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.