THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY

R : Released December 1999

starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwynyth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, and Philip Seymour Hoffman

adapted for the screen and directed by Anthony Minghella

A

The ghost of Alfred Hitchcock has been invoked numerous times by writers describing THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, Anthony Minghella's sublime new psychological thriller. While it's probably an unfair comparison for any modern film, it's not an unreasonable one in this instance. With career-changing performances by Matt Damon and Jude Law, RIPLEY shares many of the qualities that have come, in latter-day parlance, to be called "Hitchcockian": a deliberately even pace, nontraditional settings, a focus on the internal struggles of characters, homoeroticism, bizarre coincidences, and of course, murder. Watching THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY is a joy in its own right, but no one can escape thoughts of Hitchcock's films NORTH BY NORTHWEST, ROPE, or most similarly, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.

It can't be a bad thing to remind audiences of the work of perhaps the greatest film director in history. A souped-up adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's wildly successful 1950's novel, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY is only tangentially about a American serial killer in Italy. While never sacrificing the story's tension and adventure, Minghella has reorchestrated Highsmith's novel as an intoxicating cocktail of class, sex, love, and power. It's a heady mix, one that generates waves of surprise and pleasure long after one leaves the theatre.

Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) is a slightly nerdy, slightly charming young man whose poor background and lack of opportunities leads him to desperate actions. Through a chance meeting, he meets a wealthy industrialist, Mr. Greenleaf; through another whim of chance, he convinces the industrialist that he is a college friend of his son Dickie (Jude Law), a rebellious playboy who refuses to take over the family shipping business. Greenleaf hires Tom (who, by the way, never went to college) to go to Italy and convince Dickie to return to America.

Tom has never met Dickie, but pretends to. By this point, Tom has shown himself to be a master of manipulation; the fact that loneliness and need, rather than malificence and greed, motivate him to impersonate others and alter situations creates understanding, if not sympathy, of his deceits. Dickie, his fiancee Marge (Gwynyth Paltrow) and Tom become great friends, carousing through the streets of Italy as only young rich Americans could do in the 50's. Dickie is a mesmerizing, magnetic young man, classically beautiful and playfully sensual. It's no surprise, then, that Tom falls in love with Dickie (or at least the idea of Dickie) -- we realize this about the same time Tom does. But as he's rejected by Dickie, things begin to take a chilling turn. Watching the impossible situation unravel, a viewer can scarcely turn their eyes away.

Most great films depend on a tenuous balance of great performances, direction, and writing, and THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY is a precarious balance that works out marvelously. Matt Damon, the flaxen-haired pinup boy with brains, sends his character into entire new directions with his tender, disconcerting performance of Tom Ripley (arguably this year's most intricate character in cinema). Ripley is that most difficult of roles, the likeable serial killer. Damon weaves Ripley's miasma of emotions, needs, desires, and pains into a glorious patchwork of contradictions and surprises. He makes Ripley a true anti-hero, the bad guy with understandable motives, the villian that everyone is pulling for in the end. Already sporting a Golden Globe nomination for the role, he should be first in line for the Oscar nominations.

Jude Law also gives the best performance of an already-promising career. Dickie Greenleaf is an eternal scamp, the dysfunctionally convoluted golden child that everyone -- men, women, animal, vegetable, mineral -- find themselves attracted to. Like James Dean or Chet Baker (whose music makes up a great portion of the jazzified soundtrack), Dickie acts before he thinks, and lives seemingly without consequence. Law is effortlessly charming, sharp as a tack, and surprising in his bouts of ferocity. He is, to put it simply, a delight to watch.

Paltrow, in a thankless role, becomes Ripley's accuser for the second half of the film. It's a one-note part, but she struggles admirably to find whatever depth she can in a film that is, ultimately, about the games boys play. Cate Blanchett, as the clueless American tourist Meredith Logue, has similar problems, but overcomes them with a commitment to the role and her uncanny ability to mine humor from her scenes. In a very small role as Dickie's playboy pal Freddy, Philip Seymour Hoffman gives his fourth (!) great performance of the year. His turn as Freddy, the dilletante who first catches on to Ripley's double life, is astonishing.

On the heels of his Oscar-winning film THE ENGLISH PATIENT, Anthony Minghella has fashioned an exquisite, elegant picture, a riveting story told with suspense and daring. He emerges as one of the most accomplished and talented directors in Hollywood with THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, exhibiting a sure-footed control that escapes all but a few of his contemporaries. Like Hitchcock, he knows that the best films are not necessarily the ones with tidy endings, but that ambivalence is different from ambiguity. The fog never creeps in during THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, but it's as edgy and nervewracking as the Bates Motel could ever hope to be.