Tom Ripley - cool, urbane, wealthy, and murderous - lives in a villa in the Veneto with Luisa, his harpsichord-playing girlfriend. A former business associate from Berlin's underworld pays a call asking Ripley's help in killing a rival. Ripley - ever a student of human nature - initiates a game to turn a mild and innocent local picture framer into a hit man. The artisan, Jonathan Trevanny, who's dying of cancer, has a wife, young son, and little to leave them. If Ripley draws Jonathan into the game, can Ripley maintain control? Does it stop at one killing? What if Ripley develops a conscience?
Acting
Malkovich's reptilian charm—never blinking, always calculating
Direction
Cavani's cold, painterly compositions mirror Ripley's aestheticism
Production
Venetian villas and harpsichords as murder accessories
Director
Liliana Cavani
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Cavani had already adapted Patricia Highsmith's 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' in 1960 for Italian TV—she's the only director to tackle Ripley twice.
This is the only Ripley film where he's openly domestic with a girlfriend, making his corruption of Jonathan oddly parallel to marriage—seduction, shared secrets, mutual destruction.
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