THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY

There’s a glowering darkness at the heart of Minghella’s sun-kissed, classically polished continental thriller, working from the same source material as PURPLE NOON (1960), but bringing the homoerotic subtext to the fore. Here, Matt Damon’s Ripley lucks into a passport to the continental high life (and unrequited love) with epicurean rich kid Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), though Philip Seymour Hoffman smells something funny. Acutely aware of how class, money and sex shape desire and resentment, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY also plunges into the nebulous distinctions between presenting a façade to the world, outright pretense and the more radical practice of reinventing oneself.

"How's the peeping, Tommy?"