I am a big fan of Patricia Highsmith' crime-novels, which are actually more psychological thrillers than real who-done-it's. Tom Ripley is a character that for the first time came to life in the novel "The talented mister Ripley" (1955), and he had all the characteristics of Higsmith's other anti-heroes (always middle-class thirty-something next-door neighbor kind of guys), with one essential difference: Ripley did not posess any conscience. After the first Ripley-novel, which is an absolute classic, PH wrote four sequels, spread out over some 4 decades and "Ripley's game" is the third (1974). Aside from the fact that maybe the premise is a bit far-fetched, the involvement of a diseased and dying man who is manipulated into a murder brings some very good psychological insights and a thrilling plot.
John Malkovich is in every way different from Highsmith's Tom Ripley. He impersonates Ripley as an aging, balding man, with an icy coolness, an aristocratic air, dead sure of himself: everything that the authentic Tom Ripley was NOT. I guess Malkovich's version of Ripley is supposed to impress as a very sinister person, but it's all exaggerated mannerism: he can only look in one way (intense), talk in one way (mumbled and whispered one-liners) and he moves about as a stiff Nosferatu. He's also extremely unsympathetic, which is the exact opposite of the feelings that the original Ripley always evoked.
And then there was all this changing of details from Highsmith's Ripley-novels that kept surprising me. For instance: why Italy (while Tom lives in the south of France), why a giant castle (Tom lives in a chic but modest cottage), why all this ostentatious wealth (Tom always has money-troubles, living mainly of his wife who gets an allowance from her parents), why a wife that is a professional harpsichord-player and apparently knows all about his criminal activities (while Tom's wife is a darling air-head that doesn't ask questions) and why the insinuations of passionate marital sex (while Tom's Heloise doesn't care much about sex, and Tom himself is always very ambiguous about it, and by the way throughout all the Ripley-novels there are many homosexual innuendo's). Was the script-writer thinking he needed to improve on Highsmith??
Evidently I didn't like the acting of John Malkovich. Dougray Scott (as Jonathan) on the other hand did a fair job, and Chiara Caselli as Ripley's wife is mainly beautiful, but her constant lascivious behavior got a bit on my nerves. The settings (the Italian landscape and the stunning castle of Ripley) are impressive and the musical score by Ennio Morricone is beautiful in it's own right, but a bit too heavy and epic for this kind of "small" story.
All in all I was greatly disappointed. And it makes me all to curious to see this other adaptation of the same novel by Wim Wenders: "The American Friend".
John Malkovich is in every way different from Highsmith's Tom Ripley. He impersonates Ripley as an aging, balding man, with an icy coolness, an aristocratic air, dead sure of himself: everything that the authentic Tom Ripley was NOT. I guess Malkovich's version of Ripley is supposed to impress as a very sinister person, but it's all exaggerated mannerism: he can only look in one way (intense), talk in one way (mumbled and whispered one-liners) and he moves about as a stiff Nosferatu. He's also extremely unsympathetic, which is the exact opposite of the feelings that the original Ripley always evoked.
And then there was all this changing of details from Highsmith's Ripley-novels that kept surprising me. For instance: why Italy (while Tom lives in the south of France), why a giant castle (Tom lives in a chic but modest cottage), why all this ostentatious wealth (Tom always has money-troubles, living mainly of his wife who gets an allowance from her parents), why a wife that is a professional harpsichord-player and apparently knows all about his criminal activities (while Tom's wife is a darling air-head that doesn't ask questions) and why the insinuations of passionate marital sex (while Tom's Heloise doesn't care much about sex, and Tom himself is always very ambiguous about it, and by the way throughout all the Ripley-novels there are many homosexual innuendo's). Was the script-writer thinking he needed to improve on Highsmith??
Evidently I didn't like the acting of John Malkovich. Dougray Scott (as Jonathan) on the other hand did a fair job, and Chiara Caselli as Ripley's wife is mainly beautiful, but her constant lascivious behavior got a bit on my nerves. The settings (the Italian landscape and the stunning castle of Ripley) are impressive and the musical score by Ennio Morricone is beautiful in it's own right, but a bit too heavy and epic for this kind of "small" story.
All in all I was greatly disappointed. And it makes me all to curious to see this other adaptation of the same novel by Wim Wenders: "The American Friend".