The Different Guises of Tom Ripley

I have been a fan of Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley for a few years now, partly down to the surprise at Minghella making a film worth talking about but mostly because of Matt Damon's portrayal. I had always been aware of Rene Clement's Plein Soleil (1960), the first and some say best adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel. I read the novel a few months ago and finally got round to seeing Plein Soleil the other day.



The verdict? Interesting, very interesting. Whilst Minghella's version pretty much recounts the plot of the novel (with a little added gay subtext), Clement takes a rather more circuitous route. Plein Soleil begins somewhere halfway through the novel and never gives you what's happened previously as some sort of backstory. So we don't see Dickie (here renamed Phillipe) Greenleaf's father sending Ripley (played by the almost over-poweringly beautiful Alain Delon) to Europe to find him and we don't see Tom ingratiate himself into Dickie's life. This doesn't harm the film. Perhaps the lack of introspection and the wall placed between Tom and audience does. As someone on the net has noted, Delon's Ripley is far more impulsive than Damon's. There is far less thought, far less planning, far less time alone with Ripley. He remains an enigma. Perhaps that's a good thing, but maybe not.



There is a strange atmosphere to Plein Soleil. Part of it comes from the strange conflagration of Americans and French. Tom Ripley is called Tom Ripley, he talks about "going back to San Francisco" but he is played by a Frenchman speaking French. Dickie Greenleaf is renamed Phillipe Greenleaf and yet his family live in San Francisco. There is no confirmation of their nationality. Meanwhile, Freddy Miles has an American name but speaks French but with an American accent. It is all very confusing.

But there is something to Delon's Ripley that is not present in Damon's: sexuality. Not many people would argue who is the more beautiful of the two men, but Clement adds to Delon's obvious attractiveness by sending his camera fawning over him at every opportunity. Elsewhere on the net I have seen the film described as the (producers) "Hakim Brother's homage to Alain Delon's crotch". That reviewer has a point. There is certain magnetism to Delon that helps drive the Ripley character. What the "French James Dean" lacks is darkness. He smiles too much basically. He doesn't have the darkness in his eyes that Damon's version has. Damon's demonstration of Ripley's talent for mockery in Minghella's film is riveting. It scares us as much as it does Jude Law's Greenleaf. There is no such scene in Plein Soleil. Damon plays Ripley as driven and maniacal. His charm is icy, Delon's is as hot as the sun.

I suppose both films miss out on parts of Ripley. Delon's is more magnetic, more attractive, but Damon's is darker and more pathetic. This is perhaps a testament to Highsmith's creation. It is far too complex to capture in one go.

Watch both the films and read the novel(s). Somewhere in between you may well find the real Ripley. But don't expect too much, Ripley is always just out of reach.

Forgotten films

I have been watching a lot of films recently and have forgotten (or been too lazy) to write about them. I shall however write about one in detail in a following post. This post shall be a quick resume of the films I've seen.

Roger Dodger
dir. Dylan Kidd
2002

Very, very well written story of a cynical ad man (Campbell Scott) giving his geeky, teenage nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg, who you may remember as the older brother in the excellent The Squid And The Whale) a crash course in seduction one night in Manhattan. It's a fantastically observed tale of awakening, both teenage and adult, with marvellous performances by Scott and Eisenberg.

American Splendour
dirs. Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini
2003

Yes I know I'm a bit late with this one, and I can't really add much to what's already been written. Very inventive for the first hour or so before falling back into more familiar biopic formulas, although carried through by the remarkable performance by Paul Giamatti.

The World Of Henry Orient

I rented this delightful film after seeing it on The Onion's Sixteen Films That May Have Influenced Wes [Anderson's] Style list. I felt somewhat smug in being able to boast having seen a couple more than the person here!

Needless to say I hadn't seen all of them, and this was the first one to peak my interest. Made in 1964 it seems to anticipate a lot of the social change that was just around the corner, but whilst being wholeheartedly NOT a film with a message. It's a light, comic film (it stars Peter Sellers after all) about adolescent crushes.

Two girls at a prestigious New York school fall in love with Sellers' hilarious avant-garde composer (who needs prompting by his lugubrious conductor for the next note) and begin to compose an imaginary love affair, complete with love letters and trips to foreign locations. Punning on his name, they sit outside his apartment with Chinese hats on and bow, hands clasped every time they catch sight of him. Orient is seriously perturbed by these pesky kids because he is in the process of trying to entice an extremely nervous married woman into his apartment for all sorts of shenanigans. (It will not spoil the film to say that when he does finally get her inside, it produces a very funny scene).

What struck me about this film was its streak of progressive social politics. The sad, dreamy Gil lives with her divorced mother and her "old friend" and fellow divorcee. All three bond with Gil's impulsive (and quite possibly unhinged) new friend Val over their shared experiences of psychiatrists. It boasts an understanding of adolescent love and female friendship very few films made today exhibit, a tolerance of pre-pubescent imaginary love affairs as the harmless playacting they are and a realisation of their importance in maturity: Gil's mother and friend get quite teary remembering their own first crushes, and Gil's mother notes drily "now the real trouble starts" before a cut to the girls a couple of years later applying makeup and talking about boys at school.

The performances of the two newcomers Tippy Walker as Val and Merrie Spaeth's Gil are superbly natural, wonderfully ignorant of the camera. They are not the children so often seen in movies, pale, over-sentimentalised, exagerrated versions. Their friendship blossoms before your very eyes and the sadness that underpins their relationship perfectly judged: never over-bearing but always in your mind. Sellers' performance is as always entirely manic, yet wholly hilarious.

And in case you were wondering, it is SO Wes Anderson. Beautiful photography (New York in the crisp, clear sunlight of an autumn day), adrift young offspring of rich families, an undercurrent of sadness and broken homes, eccentric adults. This really is a wonderful film.