Word: ripleyisms
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...mostly in southern Italy, Minghella's tantalizing movie captures the pulse, temperature and texture of the idle rich at play and the yearning of Ripley, who wants that good life so much he'd kill for it. Inhabiting this very dolce vita is a quintet of smart-looking young performers--Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jack Davenport--giving vigorous life and fine shading to roles of wealth or breeding. They parade their star quality (or supporting-actor quality) not by screaming and cussing Method style but by radiating an unforced glamour that recalls Hollywood...
Observing these blessed creatures, coveting their unearned good fortune, is Damon's Ripley, more muted and awkward than they but a fast study. Ripley's outsider status is what especially appealed to Minghella, 45, a playwright and former professor whose Italian immigrant parents still make and sell ice cream on the Isle of Wight. "This sense of a man with his nose pressed up against the window, the sense that there's a better life being led by other people--to me, these feelings are familiar and pungent...
...discuss Minghella's adaptation of the Ripley book--how he has deepened it, enriched it, possibly distorted it--we'll be spilling a bean or two about the plot, which is, anyway, well known from the novel (published in 1955 and still in print) and a 1960 French film version, Rene Clement's Purple Noon (which is on video and was rereleased in U.S. theaters in 1996). You're welcome to see the new movie first--it should be on every naughty child's Christmas wish list. Then come back and we'll talk...
Highsmith described The Talented Mr. Ripley as being about "two young men with a certain resemblance--not much--one of whom kills the other and assumes his identity." In the novel, Tom Ripley, an orphan in his mid-20s with a gift for larceny and mimicry, is hired by a rich shipbuilder to go to Mongibello, an Italian resort village where the man's son Dickie Greenleaf (played by Law in the new film) has been idling, to try persuading the lad to return home to the family business. Tom agrees, sails to Europe and, on seeing Dickie, is dazzled...
...Remo, buries the body and goes to Rome, setting himself up as Dickie. The ruse lasts until Freddie Miles (Hoffman), an obnoxious but observant pal of Dickie's, comes to visit. Panicked by discovery, Tom bashes Freddie's head and deposits the corpse in a cemetery. Now Ripley's game begins with the police and Dickie's family. Tom will lie, forge letters and documents, anything to keep being Dickie--a role he feels he was born to play...