Word: ruses
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...novelty. But Dickie is easily bored, and he grows tired of Tom. Seeing the chance both to rid himself of a critical friend and to replace him, Tom kills Dickie in the sea off San 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...
...jealous type and he wants Oscar to keep an eye on Amy and make sure she stays out of trouble, mainly because he is under the impression that Oscar is gay. Oscar is straight, of course (are we laughing yet?), but he is forced to continue the ruse as he finds himself falling in love...
...temptation, once the ruse is discovered, is to ignore the long sections about the faux Morris. But buried within these sections are some trenchant and worthwhile observations about Reagan. After a dreamy sequence imagining Reagan practicing his swimming, Morris observes: "The swimmer enjoys a loneliness greater, yet oddly more comforting, than that of the long distance runner. One tunnels along in a shroud of silvery bubbles... Others may swim alongside for a while, but their individuality tends to refract away, through the bubbles and the blur. Often I have marveled at Reagan's cool, unhurried progress through crises of politics...
...never have to lie--not even the I-love-your-mother's-cooking sort. Had Clinton done this, he could have ducked the definition-of-sex queries and just talked about something to his liking, such as barbecue or Medicare Part B. This may seem like a fancy ruse only politicians would try, but it works in daily life...
...there were some complications to the ruse. Miriam knows Arabic and would often stop to talk to other Arabic-speaking patrons. Beth does not and would often have to fudge her way through conversations with her sister's acquaintances...