The movie

our den in Florida

On Christmas Eve, after we banished Peter into the bedroom to witness the Giants getting slaughtered, Justine and I settled in to watch a tape of "The Talented Mr. Ripley".

This was not the first time we saw this movie, but enough time has elapsed for us to have a fairly fresh take on it. Just a few minutes into the movie we started questioning Tom's (played by Matt Damion) motives for his actions. Was it an impulse to assume Dickie's (Jude Law) identity on his passage to Italy or was it a premeditated act? Was Tom corrupted by the moneyed society enough to kill or was he really in love with Dickie and killed him in a fit of passion after being bluntly rejected? Did his homosexuality manifest itself for the first time in Italy or was he always gay? Will he continue his killing spree to protect his double identity indefinitely?

The questions multiplied and we explored several moral dilemmas and the "cause and effect" issue the movie presented. Nothing really was resolved and that night I slept rather fitfully.

The next morning I googled the author of the novel upon which the movie was based - Patricia Highsmith - and the fog lifted drastically. The novelist was herself born into a privileged and dysfunctional family and developed an interest in human psychosis at an early age. She also carried on numerous lesbian affairs. In addition to the murderously "Talented Mr Ripley" whose saga she continued in four other novels, she also penned one of my favorite stories "Strangers on a Train", which was adapted by Hitchcock into a film noir.

Ms. Highsmith fascinates me for her macabre views so vividly expressed ahead of her time, in the early 50's, and I would have loved to pick her (disturbed) brain, alas she passed in 1995.

As it is, I will now visit my local library and check-out as many of her 29 works as they stock.