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New Century of Cinema
DOWSE Guide to the
Movies
by Tony Lee editor of
Pigasus
Press
The Talented Mr Ripley
Director: Anthony Minghella
review by Tamar Yellin
The first time we meet the talented Mr Ripley (Matt Damon) he is wearing a borrowed Princeton jacket, and this sets the scene for a life of borrowed identities and self re-inventions, complex machinations and lies. Despatched to Italy by a shipping magnate to bring back his wayward son, Ripley falls into a dark labyrinth of his own creating, which will include fabulous changes in fortune, love, murder and ultimately despair. Damon portrays the dark horse Ripley with uncanny subtlety, manipulating us from moments of disgust and fear to sympathy for a lost boy who doesn't know himself who he really is. But the film is stolen by Jude Law as the charismatic Dickie Greenleaf, who makes the sun shine on people for a brief while and then, when he grows tired of them, "leaves them feeling very cold." The growing unease between Ripley, Dickie and his girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow) is cunningly paced, and the film never loses its grip as Ripley runs through his options like a rat in a maze, wriggling out of one tight corner after another but never escaping from the hell he has made for himself. The film could have ended in any number of ways and kept me guessing to the last moment, though perhaps the ending chosen was not the most satisfactory one. The Talented Mr Ripley marks a return to form for Anthony Minghella after the overblown melodrama of The English Patient, and the performances are spot-on, including excellent support from Cate Blanchett and Philip Seymour Hoffman. There are no cardboard cut-out characters in this script. The Italian 'dolce vita' is sumptuously recreated and the interiors are almost unbearably authentic: you can almost feel the warmth of the sun falling through shuttered windows onto tiled floors. I suspect there will be an upsurge in Italian package holidays this summer on the back of this enjoyable film.
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