RIPLEY (TV)**

 

I absolutely adore Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels. They are slippery and subversive and dark and dangerous and about the best crime procedurals you can read. I have also loved many of the iterations by which Ripley has found himself on the big screen, from PLEIN SOLEIL to RIPLEY'S GAME and Anthony Minghella's superlative TALENTED MR RIPLEY.

When I first heard that Andrew Scott (ALL OF US STRANGERS) was cast as Ripley I was excited but I assumed that this would be an adaptation of one of the later books when Ripley was older. I was shocked to discover that this was actually an adaptation of the source novel where the characters are meant to be in their twenties. Johnny Flynn's Dickie is also in his forties.  The problem is that this makes the concept of the book seem ... well ... odd. Dickie Greenleaf dodging his responsibilities on a kind of extended gap year in Italy feels right for pretty young things but doesn't quite work for middle-aged men.  And thanks to Zaillian's choice to go for black and white photography, life in Italy never feels beautiful and lush and seductive. Rather, we start off in a world that is decaying and deserted and rather drab.  It's hard to see what in Dickie and Marge's existence would be attractive to Tom. Their life doesn't feel particularly luxurious. And there's no sexual tension between Dickie and Tom, and certainly no apparent love for Dickie on Marge's part. It's just all so flat.

As we move into the second act, things pick up pace. The crime procedural has its own momentum. Whether it needs five episodes though, is doubtful.  We see the quality of Eliot Sumner as Freddie Miles in their pivotal scene with Tom.  A scene that is played very differently to how Philip Seymour Hoffman played it, but with no less menace.  The problem is that Eliot is a good fifteen years younger than Andrew Scott and seems to be in a totally different film.

So far so problematic, but where this adaptation totally loses it is in the final episode. We begin episode eight with a flashback to Caravaggio which is way too on the noise, and a clear case of a showrunner being given way too much running time to pad out. We also get a confrontation between the police inspector and Tom that's so literally incredible it destroyed any respect I had for this adaptation. Minghella's choice to have them never meet was the more elegant solution.

RIPLEY was released on Netflix today.

George Ghon comments on MARGARET

Kenneth Lonergan’s long-awaited follow up to YOU CAN COUNT ON ME has – after a four-year-long editing squabble, and a final edit by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker – finally been released. It seems to attract considerable attention among a British audience - a diverse crowd filled the outdated screening room at the Odeon Panton Street just off Leicester Square on a recent Sunday afternoon to watch the GANGS OF NEW YORK writer’s contemporary take on Upper West Side city life. MARGARET is a daring coming-of-age tale that lets the 17-year old Lisa (Anna Paquin) become witness of a traumatic accident that proves to be formative on her young life. During the 2.5 hours of the final edit we watch the different emotional states the troubled teenager goes through during her rite de passage of becoming an adult. The woman who got rolled over by a bus after a quick meeting of the eyes by its driver with Lisa, is a sacrificial victim to the development of the main character, who, in turn, is searching for different ways to overcome her guilt.

Differing from an American school of teenage drama (Larry Clark & Harmony Korine) that almost solely relies on casual sex and the abuse of illegal substances within a culturally impoverished environment, Mr Lonergan’s MARGARET aims high and interweaves the quotidian, classroom life and family trivia with high brow references. The title is referring to Gerard Manley Hopkin’s poem spring and fall, dedicated to a young child. The outlook therein is bleak:

‘...Ah! As the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.…’

Growing up is not an easy business; plenty of tears will need to flow before a certain level of emotional maturity can be reached.

My take on this film is, furthermore, that it aims to assert the role of so called high culture and allows a largely disenfranchised society to rebuild its values according to those guidelines drawn out by classic drama and poetry, to some extent. The Met plays an important part in the movie. Bellini’s Norma opens her heart to Ramon (Jean Reno), which has a profound effect on his relationship with Lisa’s mother Joan (J. Smith-Cameron). La nuit d’amour in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann triggers the cathartic reunion of mother and daughter. The classroom is a frequent topic, where contemporary politics in the aftermath of 9/11 are juxtaposed with the musings of King Lear. Avoiding the pitfalls of intellectualization, Mr Lonergan does not use those references to show off, or distract from the story he is telling, but just melds them into his trope of big city life.

An ode to New York and its culture it is, but not an unambiguous one. 

MARGARET went on limited release in the US in September and in Canada in October.  It is on such limited release in the UK that it's only playing on one screen in Central London! Catch it while you can, or wait for the French release in August 2012.