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Cate Blanchett’s headwear in this film is legendary. That headband was just the beginning. #ripleywatch
IT’S HERE! the lime green swimsuit of LEGEND #ripleywatch
Pointing out gwyneth’s whiteness? The accuracy! #ripleywatch
He just...tweeted it out #ripleywatch
BOATS ARE FEMALE! EVERYONE KNOWS #ripleywatch
I love the trip to Naples as a way to show Dickie's secret louche saxophone-playing, whiskey-soaked second life. Everyone has layers of lies. Tom's are more ambitious, sure. But Dickie is a liar too. EVERYONE is working at cross-purposes. #ripleywatch
When ur friend calls you up to sing karaoke and u don’t want to but then u learn the song is tubthumping #ripleywatch
tom's impressions would play really well at assscat #ripleywatch
oh god, i forgot about tom's fake girlfriend "frances" the original "oh, i have a girlfriend in canada, you wouldn't know her, she's totally real, we've done it so many times" #ripleywatch
After I saw this for the first time I wanted to wear a white shirt with no pants for three straight months #ripleywatch
this is a story about an outsider (in this case, queer, poor, artist) who gets a seductive glimpse at the golden world of insiders (wealthy, pampered, "artists") and who short-circuits as a result of the push-pull revulsion of falling in love with that which he hates #ripleywatch
"I love that you brought Shakespeare with you but no clothes" -- me to me, after packing for a trip
this bath scene is the hottest scene i have ever seen in my life, period #ripleywatch
the way matt stares at jude's butt? RELATABLE
and FREDDIE MILES enters the scene. the way he drinks dickie's drink in one gulp. the little red car. his dumb cotton tie. i cannot get enough of PSH's smug blueblood pedantry #ripleywatch
ok so matt damon doing a fred astaire dance in his foppish little noel coward outfit made out of dickie's clothes is almost more erotic to me than the bath #ripleywatch
"god, a corduroy jacket in italy" has to be the best throwaway line of this whole thing
I miss her as an actress more than I realized
TOMMY, HOW'S THE PEEPING #ripleywatch
and then the way that dickie mourns silvana and his lost baby through his saxophone; so much repression, so many things unsaid #ripleywatch
the moment where jude says "i'm sick of mongi" and tom realizes dickie doesn't actually care about anything and has the privilege not to; it's his "careless people" moment and you can see the back of his neck starting to itch to do something terrible #ripleywatch
THE SHOTS IN THIS FILM
Have two people ever looked better
oh yes, the boat scene. the scene where the movie does a total 180 and begins to descend from dream ballet into haunted house
"this sordid thing with marge"
i'll give him that. the marge maintenance scene IS excruciating #ripleywatch
i'll give him that. the marge maintenance scene IS excruciating #ripleywatch
the fact that the wrestling in the boat is the closest tom will ever get to a love scene with dickie; the fluids exchanged, the touch. it's heartbreaking if you think about it (also you know, horrifying) #ripleywatch
what do we think marge's book was about anyway? i think she was writing mavis gallant-type stories about italy in the style of john o'hara and submitting them to esquire and arnold gingrich sent her a polite rejection. or maybe it was a children's book. #ripleywatch
ROME. This is when the story gets truly fucking weird. Hold on my friends. #ripleywatch
I never realized how much FUN Tom has on this spree in Rome with Meredith. It's because they are having a klatsch. They are telling each other their deep secrets. They are picking out clothes. It's all so opulent. He's LIVING. #ripleywatch
Tom feeling everything possible at the opera. It makes me want to go back and re-read Wayne Koestenbaum's The Queens Throat https://bookshop.org/books/the-queen-s-throat-opera-homosexuality-and-the-mystery-of-desire/9780306810084 #ripleywatch
how does cate blanchett look BORN into gowns? i've never seen a person look so fantastic in a dress, as if it was poured onto her body with a ladle #ripleywatch
Peter Smith-Kingsley! If you have a hyphenated name in a 1950s story you are either going to meet a tragic end or a bombastic one. #ripleywatch
cate's desperate horniness for tom even though he wants nothing to do with her and her mink in this scene is tragic; it's me with my college boyfriend all over again #ripleywatch
the two perky popular girls with their beards having a tense chitchat over coffee: tale as old as time #ripleywatch
here we are supposed to see tom's actual taste: beautiful furnishings, ability to play minuets from memory, an appreciation for lovely silks. we are meant to understand that tom would have made a very good rich person, had that been his fate. but it wasn't. #ripleywatch
PSH's flopping-fish wrist as he bangs on the piano; has anyone ever done so much with such a little thing #ripleywatch
and then Freddy doesn't APPRECIATE the taste! a rich person who again, doesn't deserve the aesthetic prowess he's been granted. he has everything and yet he drives THAT car? he wears that little tam o'shanter? he doesn't DESERVE it, you see #ripleywatch
there's something about killing a person with a classical bust that feels so...on the nose #ripleywatch
what does it say about me that this film launched my love affair with black turtlenecks #ripleywatch
i love how anthony minghella stole this hapless french detective character straight from Charade #ripleywatch
(well in this case the detective is italian, but still)
Gwyneth is acting her ass off against a DOOR. She shadow-earned that Oscar here. #ripleywatch
ANOTHER MIRROR. Our mirror count is now at one million. #ripleywatch
chic as hell tbh
that peter smith-kingsley could make that "michaelangelo and leonardo" joke straight to a police officer? somehow both a dad and a daddy #ripleywatch
so wrenching to watch the tom and peter scenes because they get along as if they are in a romantic comedy; even in the middle of a murder plot. it's the romance tom wanted and COULD have had, if he had waited. or made other choices. but now, existentially curdled. #ripleywatch
"all you want to do is toss them the key..."
that comment about taking a giant eraser and rubbing out part of himself -- not in the book, but the theme of erasers is all over highsmith's writing...here is a scene where tom rifles through dickie's things #ripleywatch
I think I based my idea of style for many years on this exact moment
Peter's hooded jacket is so monklike, a sign of his inherent goodness, and also his penchant for being whatever the 50s equivalent of a hypebeast was #ripleywatch
TOM! we always knew the jewelry hoarding habit would be your undoing
Peter and Tom essentially do not understand women, and honestly it's what always gets them both in trouble; if Peter had any read on women's gestures he would know in that moment how scared Marge really was of Tom, but of course he remains oblivious #ripleywatch
I DON'T CARE TO HEAR IT, AND I DON'T CARE TO SPEAK IT
so here's the part where we learn that dickie too was hideously violent; this is, in the end, a story about how american masculinity is seething and europe becomes a temporary bandaid, or in tom's case, a catalyst #ripleywatch
the thing people forget is that marge was the WRITER, she put together this plot long ago. love to see every man she meets dismiss her outright because of midcentury misogyny when really she is the only one who has the mystery worked out #ripleywatch
poor meredith logue, of the textile logues, who went to europe for a whole season to get a man and left only with her aunt and her herringbone coats #ripleywatch
the fact that this is one of the last things he says, he gives Tom the validation he has been searching for all his life and in a way seals his fate; he’s given Tom the final blessing #ripleywatch
and the fact that it ends with damon just weeping, but you never get to see the actual act; it's hidden again. he goes out into the world. he keeps a straight face. ripley could be anywhere. he is everywhere. #ripleywatch
AND THAT'S IT FOLKS! THANK YOU FOR JOINING #ripleywatch. AND thanks to @oureric + @alexanderchee + @thehighsign + everyone else tweeting along. Going to drop some links below if you want to further engage w/the material! And we'll do something like this again soon! #ripleywatch
To begin with: READ THE BOOK. You can do that here. https://bookshop.org/books/the-talented-mr-ripley/9780393332148
There have been other Ripley films. Clement's Plein Soleil is the French version, with Alain Delon in the role. You can stream it on iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/purple-noon/id568977734?at=1001l6hu&ct=gca_organic_movie-title_568977734
There has been SUCH great writing about this film/book over the years. I'll drop some links:
1) @haleymlotek in the ringer: https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/12/23/21034364/talented-mr-ripley-anniversary-20-years
2) Janet Maslin's review: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/film/122499ripley-film-review.html
3) @alexanderchee in the LAT https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-chee-guilty-pleasures-20170803-htmlstory.html
1) @haleymlotek in the ringer: https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/12/23/21034364/talented-mr-ripley-anniversary-20-years
2) Janet Maslin's review: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/film/122499ripley-film-review.html
3) @alexanderchee in the LAT https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-chee-guilty-pleasures-20170803-htmlstory.html
Also you can read a great @NewYorker piece on Highsmith and queerness here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/30/forbidden-love
