The Talented Mr Ripley

* * * *

Cast: Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett

Director: Anthony Minghella

Rating: M (violence,offensive language)

Running Time: 138 mins

Opens: Thursday, Village, Hoyts

Review: Russell Baillie


Had this heavyweight thriller been set in modern times and not in a sumptuous, jazz-kissed setting of late 50s Italy, inevitably one of the characters would have told Tom Ripley: "Get a life."

For that's exactly what he does. He's seen one he likes - the one that belongs to Dickie Greenleaf (Law), a shallow but handsome shipping heir who is sowing his wild oats and spending his Daddy's allowance in Italy.

He's an Ivy Leaguer, dividing his time between fellow American expatriate and live-in lover Marge; a local girl or two; sailing, skiing and sitting in with the local jazz combo. Yes, Dickie could bring out the social-climber in most anyone.

But in Ripley (Damon) - a poor, bespectacled, corduroy-wearing nobody who has faked his way into the Park Ave set and been sent to Italy by Greenleaf sen to persuade his errant son home - Dickie brings out the lovestruck sociopath. One who uses his talents for mimicry and forgery to weave a wickedly clever web after he decides that if he can't have Dickie, he will become him instead.

Soon Ripley's identity crisis has a body count.

But the real trick of this scintillating movie is that we can see it all his way. Facing close call after close call as his stacked deceptions threaten to topple, we're persuaded that Ripley deserves our empathy. That's largely due to Damon's finely-shaded performance, which captures the shift from mild-mannered fibber to something altogether more sinister.

The Italian setting aside, this is quite a departure from Minghella's Oscar-gobbling The English Patient (though this, too, has a thing for scenes in well-appointed foreign bathrooms). His script changes some aspects of Patricia Highsmith's original novel, turning up the homoerotic heat and giving musical talents to each leading man (Ripley's is classical, Dickie's is jazz) which illustrate their mindsets if not their class differences: emotionally chilly precision versus vibrant spontaneity.

That depth runs to the rest of the ensemble. Both the chameleonic Blanchett and the increasingly ubiquitous Baker Hall are quite brilliant in their supporting roles as spoiled Ivy Leaguers who figure in Ripley's ruses.

Location-wise, some of this looks like it should have had Ripley bumping into the crew of Fellini's La Dolce Vita. And in a film about wanting to be someone else, it can seem at times that Minghella fancies himself as Hitchcock. Everything from the opening credits to Paltrow's resemblance to Grace Kelly brings to mind the old master. As do the scenes of Dickie and Ripley in a carriage recalling Strangers on a Train, even without realising the Highsmith connection (that Hitchcock film was adapted from her first novel).

Thankfully, those references come with the most important Hitch-factor, a masterful sense of suspense throughout. True, something does give in the later scenes, set mostly in Venice, as it seems to fumble for a finish.

But flaws aside, Minghella and Damon make their Mr Ripley some piece of work - the classical American psycho, abroad.