I watched 'The Talented Mr Ripley' on Film4 last night, I thought it was an excellent film.
The story concerns the eponymous Mr Ripley (Matt Damon), a struggling piano tuner with a talent for lying and deception, who by accident falls into being paid by a rich New Yorker to go to Southern Italy and persuade the sponsors son Greenleaf (Jude Law) to return to the US. Ripley, having borrowed a Princeton blazer from a friend, slips into the 'role' of an old school friend of the brattish Greenleaf. The old fashioned father pays Ripley $1,000 and he heads to Italy. Once there he ingratiates himself with Greenleaf and slowly begins to become obsessed with his target, developing a strong attraction to him. Greenleaf, on the other hand, flits from friend to friend and begins to tire of the increasingly dependant Ripley. Matters come to a head when Ripley confesses his feelings for Greenleaf on a boat trip but is rebuffed and told he is 'boring'. A fight ensues and Ripley beats Greenleaf to death with an oar.
Ripley sinks the boat and disposes of the body before going ashore and assuming Greenleafs identity and lifestyle. using his forgery skills he gains access to Greenleafs allowance and sends communications to hsi fiancee insinuating he is abandoning her. Ripley's deception is discovered by a boorish friend of Greenleafs who Ripley beats to death and thus begins a cat-and-mouse match between him and Italian police as they bid to discover the murderer. Ripley has to balance this with the deception against Greenleafs increasingly heartbroken and suspicious fiancee. Eventually Ripley forges a suicide note, ensuring he is left a portion of Greenleafs inheritence and that the murdered playboy is blamed for the murder. Greenleaf's fiancee, Gwyneth Paltrow, works out that Ripley has killed Greenleaf but her outbursts are dismissed as that of a grieving hysterical woman and she is taken back to the US, a broken figure.
The movie ends with Ripley finally finding happiness with a gay friend of Greenleafs on a boat trip to Athens. The happiness is ended when an American girl who knew Ripley as Greenleaf spots him, meaning Ripley has to assume his deception. Realising that his new lover is the only person who will link him to the string of fraud, lies and murder, Ripley kills him, asking him to "tell me some good things about Tom Ripley" before strangling him whlist weeping for his last chnace at happiness.
I thought it was superb (not done justice by my babbling summary). Matt Damon played the tragic sociopath very well - although he is a multiple killer, liar, thief and deciever Ripley isn't quite the bad guy in this and his crimes seem to be motivated by a classical tragic desire for love and acceptance. After battering Greenleaf to death we see him cuddling into his corpse as though it was his lover as the boat bobs in water. This is balanced by brutal dishonesty, the way we see his crimes reduce Paltrows character to a wreck, her love taken away and she abandoned. Jude Law is superb in it, he is the perfect character to play an arrogant rich kid.