Another very late review

Finally caught up with The Talented Mr Ripley on Netflix last night.  I was just married when this came out, and there was soon a baby on the way, so I had other things on my mind.

I thought it good but not great.   A large part of the problem is that I routinely don't care for Matt Damon's acting.  He doesn't put me off quite to the same degree that Matthew McConaughey does, but I would be very happy if he would just retire so I don't have to keep on wondering why I never find him convincing.

Anyway, on reflection, the story is a bit odd for the complete lack of a sympathetic male character.  (OK, maybe there is one, but even he appears pretty dumb by the end and doesn't survive.)  I think that the 3 key male actors all seemed a bit too, um, trying too hard?   Or perhaps that is more the problem I found with Jude Law and Philip Seymour Hoffman's performances:  Damon's acting was more controlled, but still not super convincing.   

The women, on the other hand, are likeable enough, and there's no denying Gwyneth Paltrow in her day had a charming screen presence.   But the one who stood out for me was Cate Blanchett - she was 30 when this movie came out and probably at the peak of her attractiveness, and does rich elegance so, so well.   It's a pity her role doesn't get more screen time.

I had a read on Reddit about it afterwards, and find it hard to believe some people were still saying after viewing it "was Tom Ripley meant to be gay or bisexual"?   Well, duh, it's an unavoidable conclusion from the movie.  However, I see from an online article that the book highlights more than the movie does a conflicted sexuality, and in fact an aversion to sex:

Tom’s aversion to all things sexual is central to his characterisation in the novel. He feels secure in his friendship with Cleo because ‘she never wanted or expected him to make a pass at her’, and dismisses Dickie kissing Marge as ‘cheap, obvious, easy’.

At the same time, Tom’s adoration of Dickie is painted in clearly romantic terms; he is drawn to Dickie’s ‘handsome’ looks and ‘the proud way he [carries] himself’, and fantasises about killing his girlfriend Marge for ‘interfering’ with ‘the bond between them’. In a moment of vulnerability with Peter towards the end of the novel, he briefly wonders whether ‘the same thing that had happened with Dickie could happen with Peter’. Tom’s asexuality and the fact that he is romantically attracted to men are given equal weight in the novel, but adaptations of the novel exaggerate the latter and ignore the former entirely.

So, he might not be cinema's first bisexual (or repressed gay?) psychopathic murderer and liar, but it's first asexual one who none the less feels romantic attraction (and is repulsed by it).  Interesting concept.  In retrospect, I can see how that is reflected to some degree in the film (there is never an indication that he gets physical with anyone, on or off screen), but it could have been made clearer and perhaps made for a more interesting explanation of his psychological problems.

I also see that the character went on to appear in another 4(!) novels.   So there was quite a following for this anti-hero.  Personally, I'm glad there have no more movies about him.   I'm not a fan of the bad guy winning.  

Update:  I did think during the movie about how it had themes very common in Hitchcock films, and see today that Patricia Highsmith, about whom I could recall little apart from knowing she had lesbian relationships, wrote Strangers on a Train.   This New Yorker article about her is pretty interesting.