Talented indeed

• Published date: 09 April 2024
• Publication title: Signal

HERE he is, then: every ounce of his talent, ineffable charm and lightly reptilian hotness on display. Andrew Scott steps up to play Patricia Highsmith’s titular antihero in Netflix’s eight-part adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley (the first volume of a series of pulpy novels now known as the “Ripliad”)

When we first meet him, Tom Ripley is living in a borderline flophouse in New York and scratching an inelegant living as a petty, white-collar criminal; diverting people’s post and cheques, and running fake debt collection agencies. But you can’t keep a bad man — or a good fraudster — down for long. When Dickie Greenleaf’s father offers him the job (the only one of Dickie’s friends who will entertain the idea) of heading out on an all-expenses paid trip to Italy to try to persuade his son (played by Johnny Flynn) to give up his wastrel life in Europe and come home, he grabs the opportunity. By which I mean: runs with it clutched to his chest with both hands, as far as it will take him.

Soon, Tom has inveigled his way into Dickie’s life, gaining his trust and gently moulding himself around his friend’s personality and needs, while the golden boy’s coolly appraising girlfriend, Marge (Dakota Fanning), watches with increasing suspicion from her increasingly sidelined position. Fans of the book and what has come to be seen — until, possibly, now — as the definitive screen version of it, Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley (released in 1999, starring Matt Damon as Tom, Jude Law as Dickie and Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge), will know the plot. But its fresh execution is quite something.

Ripley is shot entirely in black and white, and the noir element is not soft-pedalled. Rainy nights abound. If there are puddles, we will see Ripley reflected in them. We hear every hiss and crackle of every cigarette, and watch every plume of smoke from those resting in (occasionally fateful) ashtrays. It looks, as we swan around Italy, utterly gorgeous.

It also moves incredibly slowly. For those who can lean in and appreciate the capture of a sensibility summarised in Graham Greene’s description of Highsmith as a “poet of apprehension”, this will be one of the best things about it. The careful mapping of Tom’s every move, whether in furtherance of his deceit or the covering up of his crimes, allows the tension to mount exquisitely. That’s even before Inspector Ravini (Maurizio Lombardi) arrives to investigate...