Ripley: monochrome Netflix adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s thriller
Ripley is far from the first screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley: there was Plein Soleil in 1960, starring Alain Delon, and Anthony Minghella’s version in 1999, said James Jackson in The Times. Wisely, this one “tries something different”. Presented in “stylised black and white”, the eight-part Netflix series features Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley, the grifter who is hired to travel to Italy to convince the wealthy Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) to go home to the US; and who instead inveigles his way into Dickie’s life, as Dickie’s girlfriend (Dakota Fanning) watches from the sidelines with mounting suspicion. “At times it can feel as if you’re watching scenes from a play”, but “almost by stealth”, the series draws you in.
Previous versions of Ripley have been flooded with Mediterranean colour, said Sam Kriss in The Spectator. This one is suffused in grey gloom; every Italian sky is overcast; every pavement is wet from rain. It’s ponderously slow, and Ripley – the man who is seduced by Dickie’s world, then seduces everyone in it – is just “miserable and menacing”. Scott, alas, is “bafflingly miscast”. He is far too old for the part, and in every scene “looks like he’s just bitten into a lemon”.
I can see that people might find the drama’s “monochrome beauty slightly exhausting or pretentious”, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. And it does take its time. “But stick with it; allow yourself to yield to both and let Ripley seduce you. There is magic at work here.”