The Talented Mr Ripley

The Fifties-Manhattan lavatory attendant, Tom Ripley, borrows a Princeton jacket to play piano at a garden party. When the wealthy father of a recent Princeton grad, Dickie Greenleaf, chats Tom up, Tom pretends to know the son and is soon offered $1,000 to go to Italy to convince Dickie to return home. In Italy Tom attaches himself to Dickie and to Marge, Dickie’s cultured fiancée, pretending to love jazz and harbouring homoerotic hopes as he soaks in luxury. Besides lying, Tom’s talents include impressions and forgery, so when the handsome and confident Dickie tires of Tom, dismissing him as a bore, Tom goes to extreme lengths to make Greenleaf’s privileges his own. This is a fine adaptation of the original Patricia Highsmith novel.

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