Adapted by Patricia Highsmith, the series with Andrew Scott (“Fleabag”) unfolds as a dark and atonal thriller, ultimately captivating.
A quarter of a century ago, the film adapted from Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley by Anthony Minghella, organized a parade of stars (Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett) in a luminous atmosphere, dotted with pretenses. In 1960, Alain Delon lent his features to the sociopathic and liar hero in the classic Full Sun by René Clément. As if to close the door to overly heavy comparisons, the creator of RipleySteven Zaillian – he wrote and directed the entire season – dresses the eight episodes of his series in dense, stylized, even polished black and white, set with explicit references to Caravaggio.
In this permanent chiaroscuro, we discover an American wandering in Atrani, on the Amalfi Coast. Tom Ripley was sent there by a wealthy New York businessman who would like to convince his son Dickie Greenleaf to come home. There, Tom Ripley does the complete opposite of what he was asked: he gets closer to the man and his partner, but rather than convincing them to return to America, he lives with them and ends up want more. The dizziness of identity begins. The series, slow to start, takes off when the starting trio explodes. Ripley then becomes an (in)quest in the footsteps of a man on the run through Italy, of whom we are the only ones to know that he is lying about his identity. Among other cover-ups.
In the role of Tom Ripley, Andrew Scott finds a playground which reminds us that he was not only the sexy priest of Fleabag season 2 or the lover transfixed by the memory of Without ever knowing usthe wonderful film by Andrew Haigh released last February, but also a very convincing series villain, with his incarnation of Moriarty in the English Sherlock. This boy can be frightening, and so much the better, because here he is in almost every way, a fleeting marathoner of a life that he seems to lead beside his pomp, both absent from the world and from himself. . Ripley, in the guise of Andrew Scott, is like a smooth surface of seduction without depth, a pure apparition in the theater of society. A being without real melancholy or sexuality, like an enigma which we know in advance will not conceal any mystery. To make this exciting, the Irish actor gives of himself with a commitment that deserves respect. He seems to invent worlds that don’t exist in the head of a guy who barely speaks. Performing alone is one of the most complex challenges for an actor, and Scott achieves it with the brilliance of a great.
The game of appearances and deceptions put in place by the creator of the series, experienced among the experienced (we know Steven Zaillian in particular for the script of Schindler’s List and the HBO series The Night of), works less on the beauty of the staging – it is rather strong, sometimes submerged in its plastic splendor – than on its perseverance in tracing a unique path, in maintaining a tone that never changes, in creating an effect absolutely serial habituation. Without being a masterpiece, Ripley then finds its rhythm and captivates by the stakes it places in each new scene – will the liar lie better? – when each moment could simply resemble the last. Weariness, which sometimes occupies our mind, finally gives way to a universe where the successive layers of fiction no longer make us want to leave. Ultimately, Ripley looks like an anomaly in the Netflix system – it was originally intended for the cable channel Showtime – and therefore good news.
Ripleyby Steven Zaillian, available on Netflix
