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The Talented Mr. Ripley
Jun. 17th, 2025 08:11 amDreamed I had been drafted and was about to be flown off to a war in a foreign land, only I couldn't find my purse & was panicking because how could I fly if I didn't have any ID?
Somehow I knew, though, that this was only a dream and kept telling myself, Don't worry, your purse is where you always stash it—near your desk!
(Editorial note: I have a tendency to misplace things and waste hours looking for them, so over the years have trained myself to put logistical stuff—keys, bills, purse—in specific spots to track them. It's what passes for organization in my world.)
But knowing where my purse was in the woke world did not solve my quandary in the dream world. Where was my purse? And if I could not find it, what would they do to me?
Frantically, I began calling people I'd seen the night before to see if they knew.
Then, as the first soldiers in my squadron were lining up to board the plane, Mrs. Neighbor Ed showed up with my purse!
She put it down.
I tried to pick it up—but a filigree gold chain spilling out of the purse had somehow gotten caught in whatever she'd put the purse down on, so I couldn't move it. And I was getting frantic—Should I break the gold chain? But the gold chain is so beautiful!—when I woke up.
###
Decided yesterday to pretend that exercise is really, really baaaaad for you and that lolling around on the lounging couch watching every Ripley movie ever made & eating cookies is what scientists recommend for disease prevention and wellness promotion.
The Criterion Channel—Ichabod kindly gifted me a subscription—is doing a marathon.
My favorite Ripley is actually the recent Netflix The Talented Mr. Ripley. It's the truest to the novel. Most viewers hated it because it was shot in black and white—lush, colorful Italy? In black and white?—but I actually thought that was a brilliant choice in a film about deception because it emphasized the shots' composition, allowing you to see the bones of the piece. And Andrew Scott is very, very good in it, although the rest of the cast is uniformly awful.
The popular favorite is Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley with Matt Damon—fresh from Good Will Hunting!—in the title role. The gay undercurrents in this one are pushed from subtext to declamative, but I personally think that's too easy an out: Ripley does what he does and is who he is not because he is tortured by his own sexuality but because he's a complete sociopath.
And then, of course, there's Plein soleil whose Ripley is Alain Delon, the most beautiful human male ever born. Adonis only wishes he looked like Alain Delon in his youth! This one holds a special place in my heart because I first saw it when I was eight years old—my mother was too poor to be able to afford babysitters, so she always brought me with her when she went to see the foreign movies she so loved. This is the only Ripley in which Ripley is brought to justice—I suppose because it was made in 1960 and back in 1960, people hadn't yet started rooting for the sociopaths.
###
This YouTube video provides an excellent compare-and-contrast of Minghella's Ripley and Plein soleil:
Somehow I knew, though, that this was only a dream and kept telling myself, Don't worry, your purse is where you always stash it—near your desk!
(Editorial note: I have a tendency to misplace things and waste hours looking for them, so over the years have trained myself to put logistical stuff—keys, bills, purse—in specific spots to track them. It's what passes for organization in my world.)
But knowing where my purse was in the woke world did not solve my quandary in the dream world. Where was my purse? And if I could not find it, what would they do to me?
Frantically, I began calling people I'd seen the night before to see if they knew.
Then, as the first soldiers in my squadron were lining up to board the plane, Mrs. Neighbor Ed showed up with my purse!
She put it down.
I tried to pick it up—but a filigree gold chain spilling out of the purse had somehow gotten caught in whatever she'd put the purse down on, so I couldn't move it. And I was getting frantic—Should I break the gold chain? But the gold chain is so beautiful!—when I woke up.
###
Decided yesterday to pretend that exercise is really, really baaaaad for you and that lolling around on the lounging couch watching every Ripley movie ever made & eating cookies is what scientists recommend for disease prevention and wellness promotion.
The Criterion Channel—Ichabod kindly gifted me a subscription—is doing a marathon.
My favorite Ripley is actually the recent Netflix The Talented Mr. Ripley. It's the truest to the novel. Most viewers hated it because it was shot in black and white—lush, colorful Italy? In black and white?—but I actually thought that was a brilliant choice in a film about deception because it emphasized the shots' composition, allowing you to see the bones of the piece. And Andrew Scott is very, very good in it, although the rest of the cast is uniformly awful.
The popular favorite is Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley with Matt Damon—fresh from Good Will Hunting!—in the title role. The gay undercurrents in this one are pushed from subtext to declamative, but I personally think that's too easy an out: Ripley does what he does and is who he is not because he is tortured by his own sexuality but because he's a complete sociopath.
And then, of course, there's Plein soleil whose Ripley is Alain Delon, the most beautiful human male ever born. Adonis only wishes he looked like Alain Delon in his youth! This one holds a special place in my heart because I first saw it when I was eight years old—my mother was too poor to be able to afford babysitters, so she always brought me with her when she went to see the foreign movies she so loved. This is the only Ripley in which Ripley is brought to justice—I suppose because it was made in 1960 and back in 1960, people hadn't yet started rooting for the sociopaths.
###
This YouTube video provides an excellent compare-and-contrast of Minghella's Ripley and Plein soleil:
