homme fatale

"thr fugitive kind" is another terrific piece scripted by tennesse williams, and it is adequately casted with marlon brando and ann magnani as williams' two archetyped characters in his plays: sexually dissatisfied female with great willpower vs luscious male with stormy sex antagonism. the harsher extreme exemplification would "streatcar named desire" as brando's stanley is the central object of desire, perhaps williams' personal inclination does contribute to his various creations of "homme fatale" which is men who are the seductors casting or catalyzing doom to women.

by this time, brando is the alluring drifter with snakeskin jacket and guitar by his side, a symbol of his uninhibited nature, an aloof poise which fascinates women with masochistic tendency. and two women become the prey under his charm: one lewd exhibitionist and one shrew with tangled past. somehow he's employed by the latter whom he also falls in love with. but the malice of the woman's invalid spouse brings forth catastrophe to everyone, nothing left but a snakeskin jacket remained from a fire disaster, another symbol of williams' poetric tragedy, and one fugitive kind seeks another to compensate.

brando's male beauty has not been in the prime blossom as he was in 1951 "streetcar named desire", by 1959, he starts to bare some rugged ripeness. anna magnani, who makes her fame in "the rose tattoo", is perfect casting choice as the elder woman whose vigor of life is mighty enough to lure brando without being perished into pieces by him.

"the fugitive kind" is one good example of the significance of the scriptor, and the movie's functionality all relies upon the pearly lines of tennesse williams and his metaphoric usage of lust and death which are frequent themes in his plays as well as the occasional dialogues of existential futility which are too lengthy to be mentioned here. "fugitive kind" requires your thorough attention to chew over the clever words of pessismistic wisdom, far from a mindless pleasure you could squander over.

"possessed" is one of the few flicks in the 40s which allows miss crawford to behave demurely like a lady, and effectively "possessed" has a sympathetic touch of ingrid bergman's "gaslight" with charles boyer as the insidious husband who schemes to trap his wife into insanity for the diamond thivery. here crawford takes the reverse aim to her patterned vixen image and also nullifies her constant dose of glamour that catalyzes her brittleness to fracture into shattered pieces as genuine frailty.

the plot whirls around an inwardly knotted woman named louise whose avidity for the love of a man called david sinks herself into the abysmal disillusion when david gets weary of her clingy affection, then her problematic mental disorder is ripping her off relentlessly with guilt-ridden hallucinations. the script is written on the basis of freudian psychoanalysis of the relieving function of confessions, and the story builds along her narrative descriptions. this applied technique is nothing innovative but stereotyped psychological drama thru the protagonist's gradual sequence of self-revelations.

the psychology of louise would be her fear in the void of love, and she alerts herself with her perennial detachment required in her occupation as a nurse, then once the wall of passion collapses, neediness starts to haunt her in despair. except crawford's accomplished performance of the mentally illed, the rest of the movie is actually stiflingly cliched, even it's arranged with firmly condensed structure but inevitably melodramatic.

the heartthrob who captivates poor louise's heart is played by van heflin whose david is a repellently cynical womanizer who operates upon his careless whim, who has no pity upon louise. he's aware that she suffers from the want of his love and intimacy in the level of sharpeningly errosive agony, but he still refuses to grant just a bit more of tenderness or compassion, worse of all, he chooses to reoccur frequently in her life without a bit merciful avoidance, eventually he even courts her daughter-in-law shamelessly that stimulates her extremity to crack up in slices. the charisma of helfin's david is bewilderingly beyond comprehension, same as louise's possessive infatuation upon him, heflin doesn't look convincingly gorgeous enough like a martini idol, and there's no likability in the character of david who is neglectfully indifferent and playfully ruthless. one particular line he utters "i've done nothing wrong to you except falling out of love with you, and that's man's previledge" is obnoxiously chauvinistic, maybe repulsively sexistic as well.

it resembles olivia de havilland's "snake's pit" with the presence of paternal figure with infinite patience and supportive love: in "snake's pit", miss dehavilland has her nodding husband and her kind-faced doctor; miss crawford only has her willingly awaiting husband who still remains a thread of hope upon her..as dehavilland, crawford also de-glamourizes herself to manifest the deeper scale of her acting talent....is paternal gentility a necessity to heal off female mental perversenes? maybe so, in freud's over-anatomized interpretation of parental fixation.

a highly underrated film noir flick starring tyrone power who is usually the typecasted swashbuckler....a story around the circus and the art of con. power plays a drifter who seeks a job in the circus and acquires the trickery of conning art supervised by the senior con woman played by joan blondell. he escapes after accidently sparking off one drunk member's death....he elopes with another female performer who has a crush upon him, soliciting her as his co-schemer(and his marital spouse) as the upcoming fraud. then he recruits a female psychiatrist as his extended crew to enlarge the scale of his racket and evolve his status of fame....then he flops into the gutter due to one trivial failure of conscience. eventually he gets doublecrossed by the psychiatrist then becomes a degenerated drunk drifter without any perspective....retracks back in the primitive spot he begins...even worse, he transforms into an authentic geek which means beast-alike man without no intelligence.

this flick amplifies the noirish cynicism to the sublime extremity, simmering with errosive irony: he observes the geek when he just joins the crew then utters "how could anyone get so low?"...also he disbelieves the old flame of bondell's used to be a master of con...at last, he sinks into the deepest low with double-level bastardization.

power is notably a gorgeously striking man, and it's alluringly convincing to cast him as the womanizer, the taker who extract profits from female affinity, and he's made by women's benevolence but also ruined by the misdeed and the malice of women. just as the latin saying "what nourishes me destroyes me"...eventually his male beauty is despoiled of then devastatingly wasted that stimulates some shock effect to the audience, particularly when you recall the devilishly seductive expression on his face when he whispers love to his wife's ear then coaxes her tenderly into compromising to his next con, then you look into the carved uglified face later, then hearing him growling like human beast geek, what a shock....even he's still redeemed by love at last that doesn't dissolve a bit of its sour taste since it also parallels another sorrowful love story of bondell's character in the beginning.

this movie proves the potential depth of tyrone power as an actor, and he's much more talented than most people assume. "nightmare alley" is the proof that he could be the noirish anti-hero as well...just as "witness for the prosecution" shows that he can be a evil villain... but his conspicuous male beauty is so pleasant to the eye that you just could not help but infatuated that overshadows the recognition of his talent. is that a blissful bless or a ill-fated curse?

"suspicion" is hitchcock's second collaboration with joan fountain after the breath-takingly enthreal "rebecca"...also an ideal showcast for cary grant to demonstrate his acting scale of enabling to emit a blurred sense of sinisterness which differentiates his usual comic touch.

fountain is a spinister-alike uptight debutante who is secretly smotheringly passationate. with her emotions sealed under her nerdy frigid appearance until she meets playboy cary grant who is capable of nothing except womanizing, gambling and squandering. she gallopes to his bosom to repel against her parents' predication of her foredoomed celibate for life. after their sudden marriage, she discovers all his vices, and there's some perilous duplicity in him coated with his attentive thoughtfulness. her doubts toward him stack up after she finds out his over-enthusaism of studying murder cases as well as his eagerness to obtain the chemical formula of the un-tracable poison. how shall fountain do to survive over this sweetly handsome devil?

the scene of grant delivering a glass of milk to fountain is particularly creepy since it shimmers with omnious gleam in the dark that is resulted from hitchcock's whimiscal invention of setting a shining light bulb in the milk to constrast the background dimness, with a worrisome fountain lying upon the bedside frowning. what an atmostpheric scene.

the original story of "suspicion" actually encloses with the husband successfully disposes of the wife over the cliff road then acquires her insurance policy. but rko company demands hitchcock to alter the ending due to grant's romantic debonair image which populates in most flicks they invest upon him. so "suspicion" has two versions of endings, of course, ultimately hitchcock chooses to play it safe, and also it sorta fits into the moral sequence he often lectures in his flick, the trustful cord of marrital harmony, but usually hitchcock would bare you the betraying condemnation instead of ideal blossoming.

the billy wilder classic of noirish inside-hollywood story which centers on a middle-aged woman who cannot lead a life exclusive of camera, daydreaming in the fragments of reminiscent glories, norma desmond(gloria swanson). this tale also involes an ill-fated writer(william holden) who stumbles into her elephant-alike mansion then dwells in it as her kept man, as well as her voluntary loyal servant(erich von stroheim) who used to be her first husband, who loves her so much that he dedicates the rest of his life to maintain this woman's wanton reverie of eternal stardom regardless of his own pride and self-esteem.

enough has been said about this flick's master touch of sharp-tongued poignancy, and its gothic sense of decadence on the remnants of tumultous 20s aura in stark anachronism that is strangely enhanced by the guest celluoid of buster keaton....gloria swanson and erich von stroheim are practically impersonating their own caricatured versions. swanson's the role of yesterday's glamour queen was once assigned to the vamp sex symbol theda bara. william holden is the first actor in cinema history to play a giglo, and his role was once dispatched to montgomery clift who chose to pair elizabeth taylor then in "the place in the sun"(good choice, monty!).....the last scene in the movie is literarily a creepy parody of silent macabre constrasted with 50s news reel, one last remained saving grace for the damned dreamer.

"sunset blvd." is holden's chance to make a turning point in his withering career then, and he dignifies the role with his mocking machismo, despite the fact his mr. gilis is a dishonorable man who makes a living on woman's allowance, you could still perceive his reluctance to succumb to her domineering compulsion as well as his strong sense of self in repulsive resistence of her inflicted confinement. gloria swanson delives the best flatulent lines as a tigress woman who refuses to surrender to the course of nature: decay and death that somehow ironically circulate around her, especially when she says "i'm still BIG, it's the picture gets SMALL!"

erich von stroheim's role as the hound-alike max with sullen face deserves more attention and recognition. in spite of his grim-countenance, max is severely self-aware, and also a romantic steer concealed under his frown solemn outlook. stroheim is cooly idiocyncratic with his thick accent and his distinctively exotic (xenophobic?maybe) outfits that suits his soldier-alike demeanors. his character simmers with undercurrent nobility which you could also identify with his role as the decent nazi in renoir's "the grand illusion"...

maybe on some sunday afternoon, as you're weary of those hollywood glamously inflated flicks, you might be welcomed to drive into the desolated "sunset boulvd." as your ultimate retreat of cinema wasteland.

could you imagine rhet butler's favored blonde prostitute belle walting in "gone with the wind" impersonating a chinese dragon lady? that would happen under the directional trademark of josef von sternberg.

ona munson plays the casino-owner mother "gin sling" in shaghai of china, and she schemes to claim her retribution upon her primary past fued from the new-arriving official sir guy charter. meanwhile she ensnares a young beautiful dame who calls herself poppy smith(a still burgeoning gene tierney) into the allure of the arabian giglo-poet omar(victor mature)....maliciously she intends to corrupt the girl into further deprivity by the thrills of gambling and sexual slavery. gin sling proceeds her conspiracy with resourceful levels to settle her so-called former debts.

gene tierny luminates with brightful glamour in the outset with her flighty manners, and you could forsee a future major star then while ona munson endeavors herself at her perverse chineseness with her stuck-out cheekbones and the twisted slanted eyes contorted by her straight-lined raising eyebrows. the cosmetics of mother gin sling is literarily a grostesque from caucasion's stereotyped image upon a dragon lady magnified over a thousands times to create an imaginary monstress. maybe it's really histrionic but it's certainly attention-grappling and definitely not dull to watch. a ultimate realization of the best camp!

the background sceneries appear engrossingly campy with all the absurd chinese exotica as if von sternberg collects all the eccentric antics of china to dispatch them together to conjure up an aura of lush nightmarish foreign land with creeps and living wax figures of "caucasian chinese"....and the script is written upon the occidental concepts of some incomprehensible chinese conventions as if it's strutting its enormous knowledge on chineseness, such as the elder china-man with five wives who flaunts his acquired conceptions upon women(another white chinese imatation with types on his eyelids) or gin sling's remark of filial piety....and gin sling likes to speak with her sentence began as "we chinese...."

but is "shanghai gesture" derogatory to chinese? apparently not. how could it form any harm to the china image since it's so obviously fake? just like the mythical theme of arabian nights, you could gallope wild in your most wanton fantasies of exoticism. contrarily, it's well-depicted pulp fiction of the raging sound of minority races in a very idiocyncratic way since it's a getting-even tale of a grudgy chinese woman who battles her conscienceless caucasian lover who tramps her with severe exploitations. some might criticize the asiastic villainy in early hollywood cinema was uglifying those oriental races, but under another spectacle, it's more aloofly characteristic to be raw and untamed....the contemporary asian castings as user-friendly adapters to the occident is lackluster and characterless in comparasion with the ancient edginess of recalcitrants since asiastic races were still considered mean, insidious people in 18th century novels....on the other hand, what's so cool about chineses (or asiastic) being dosmeticated as the meek ones like nowaday trends of globalization?

"kiss me deadly" is not the conventional noir which populates in 1940s with detective hero scenarios, and contrarily our opportunistic protagonist could be the meanest dubious anti-hero who sticks to his chauvinist womanizing lifestyle without redeeming mercy. and the catastrophe at last is the metaphoric phobia for the atomic age when chemical explosion is the deadliest phemonal crisis then. the femme fatale is ruthlessly trigger-happy pandora who unravel the lethal box of doom. the world surrounded within "kiss me deadly" is not entirely realistic decadence for the crimes of passion but a crooked labyrinth where man's avarice dominates, and the cynicism of such macabre is timelessly contemporary.

the profile of our male protagonist is cleverly anchored within the dialogues at the opening sequence while a female asylum inmate hitchhikes his two-seat chic roadster: "a self-indulgent male who cares nothing but his clothes, his car, who only takes but never gives in a relationship."....then the horrid murder under the disguise of car wreck follows after a brutal kidnap. so this self-indulgent male happens to be a bedroom dick, who philanders his own girlfriend to profit from divorce cases, is eager to investigate the truth of the matter on his own, NOT for the sake of performing justice but to gain an angle of earning quick cashes. the process of mayhem is highly practiced within the procedue of obtaining what he yearns to know. so this self-obessed man intimates everyone involed and embraces to kiss every woman to attain his purposes. and that includes whoring his own sappy girlfriend AGAIN. BUT his effortless greed is futile since what he's after turns out to be an appartus of apolytic condemnation.

this is an universe running amok with its sinister overpower, and its lack of heroic savior is modern syptom of aloof amorality which detonates the explosion of pandora's box to ruminate man's own misdemeanors. ralph meeker's self-assumptious chauvinist ends up being a dope who takes the bullet of punishment from a guiling female con, so he retreats into his maternal girlfriend's bossom to do away with the forseeing descent of pandora's evil venom...could he be immue?

needless to say, the illuminator is ralph meeker's devilish womanizer as well as gaby rodger who emanates a modern sense of diabolism which rivals lena olin in "romeo is bleeding"...there's not much realism in "kiss me deadly" but an intriguing concept expressed in an utterly self-centered perspective.

"suddenly, last summer" is another cinematic adaption from tennessee willaims' tale of subdued lust channeled thru auto-eroticism, and the catatonic revelation shows williams' conventional stance of guilt against homosexuality since its gay protagonist appears obscurely "faceless", incurring the doom to be devoured and sliced into pieces which adds up a gothic aroma of god's merciless condemnation against incest and onanism.

letting alone the vying feud between its stars: clift, taylor and hepburn. (the recovering clift from disfiguration and alcoholism shuns aside insipidly as taylor and hepburn are eager to monopolize the screen time), the movie is dialogue-driven (just like any classic movie based upon williams' plays) under narrowed indoor spots which creates an adequate claustrophobic fright which fits the story, particularly the artificial prehistorical garden of sebastian's residence.

it's a story about a psychiatrist(clift) who is urgent to gather the one million to build up the public hospital from a rich widow, miss violet(hepburn), who is over-obsessed with her demised son, sebastian, meanwhile he doesn't wanna perform the cruel lobotomy to the rich widow's niece, katherine, (played by taylor, who is the witness to sebastian's death, who might expose the sordid details within violet and sebastian) against his conscience. the mere alternative is to find out how sebastian died last summer, so the desperate psychiatrist must exert himself to obtain the fund from one woman; truth from the other.

the riveting aspect would still be tennesse williams' two archetypes of genders. as for the male protagonists, williams favor to mold homosexual males with a genteel soul of poet intimated by the gluttonous desire of the strong females, OR muscular brutes with lush physicality contempt women in an earnestly misogynistic way. commonly, willaims' woman characters are all voluptuous powerful females who suffer from the void of sexual consummation, promiscuous but eternally dissatisfied by their intense want of sex.

sebastian is the most frequently mentioned name in the script, and it seems like everything whirls around this enigmatic sebastian whose existence could jeopardize the inward peace of these two dynamic women, but the obliterated cameo of sebastian leaves audience more space of imagination (just like rebecca in hitchcockian fable) as the non-existent homme fatale who brings ill-fate to hot-headed passionate women.

as freud once remarks, homosexuality might be rooted from the manipulation of an overbearing parent who views her son as the substitute lover so the man cannot romance or exercise his lust to any other woman since it would be like betraying mother whom he loves and hates terribly in the same time and "suddenly, last summer" seems like a perfect exemplification for this complex. it also reflects williams' paradoxical denial to his own inclination since he chooses to terminate sebastian, an attractive poet who turns his own mother and cousin into his pimps, in a horrid method of pessimistic fatalism as the vultures in the blue sky are destined to consume the newly born infants of sea turtles, a horrific analogy of nature's brutality against all the living things, including the misanthropic poet who covets other men.

but williams does have sparing mercy for katherine who represents his miserable sister who gets lobotomized for good, so katherine survives wholesomely while the domineering violet flops into the prey of insanity as williams' simmering grudges against maternity.

"streetcar named desire" is a mighty classic from tennesse williams' play. of course, the earth-shaking marlon brando is hardly to be neglected with his raw beastly sensuality, and ballsy vivien leigh is willing to de-glamourize her southern belle image in "gone with the wind" to appear as a wailingly aging nymphmaniac female who deserves the most pathos.

much has been said about brando and leigh's performances, no need to elucidate further since it's so conspiciously brilliant that audience would notice himself. despite the brando's charisma and sex appeal, the cultural ideology under williams' symbolic dialogues should be studied further.

it's a story about the marred dim glory of old south prestige where blanchet (leigh) and stella get nutured, and how they descend under a mercilessly spiteful palm of one prole savage, stanley(brando)...blanchet commits numerous adulteries then retreats back her sister's home in industrial area, forced to confine under the same roof with her violent bro-in-law stanley who runs amok in poker games and shouts to his wife all the time. blanchet tries to restore stella back in the right track of their gentle breed that arouses the intense animosity of stanley who schemes to unravel blanchet's sordid past to jeopardize her new-sought potential marriage with mitch. so he could susccessfully eliminate blanchet, then further he even violates her sexually.

stanley's character is the side of new american, mostly primitive immigrants, who contempt tender civilization of old genteel. this new breed of americans is brutally philistine due to their suviver prole nature as stanley's mention of nappolian code and eager estimation on blanchet's lost land, and they're also crude misogynists who hate to be ordered around by women. they demand the absolute depotism over their women, and women should shut their mouth at dinner table as stanley smashes the dishes to do his table-cleaning. and this new prole-born americans are repulsed against the polite gentlemanship advocated in hollywood movies. stanley hates to give women compliments and his desperate need for his wife stella is like a caveman yelling out for mating in agony, as he growls "STELLA!!!!!!!"

blanchet is narcissistically self-deceiful but pitifully excusable. despite her self-obsession, she's imaginatively lyrical, craving for the beauty of waltz even under a roof filled with rednecks, prefering to wrap light-bulb with chinese lantern, as she remarks "i cannot stand brutal conversations as i cannot stand the naked light-bulb" even she grows into a caricature for her bizarre insistance on her old south courteous mannerism. as willaims' preference to have his female lead as vigorous, sexually depraven female in desperate crave for their homosexual spouse uncapable to satiate the marital duties. blanchet's first love, 16 year-old lad who commits suicide due to his failture of consummation, is another williams' typical tragic catalysis. to escape death, she seeks the obverse desire, her so-called "kindness from strangers", that leads to her embarassment of pedophilic scandal and her self-exploitative intercourses. libido and love is compartmentalized, thus blanchet's doomed with neurotic sensitivity, a more delicate complexity stanley lacks and ignores, shattered by stanley's unrelenting violence into pieces.

brando could transfer such objectionable character to a sexy beast even he conducts himself clumsily, that could parallel the 50s beat spirit to revive the partriachy he reveres. blanchet's catastrophe into asylum is the metaphoric ruin of old doctrines.

"cat on a hot tin roof" would probably be the very picture in which paul newman and elizabeth taylor radiate the maxium of sex appeal despite their primitive physical allure has been shimmeringly evident in almost every picture they made separately within 1950s but "cat on a hot tin roof" shall be the most powerful one. somehow i wonder how came tennese williams' plays catapulted into such enormous stardom in the 50s since those reputed scripts of his had been composed and put into broadway during 1940s, why 1950s had the appropriate atmosphere for the williams temperament to glow and shine brilliantly upon the silver screen? my personal assumption may have lots to do with the death of film noir as well as the newly arised and foundamentally revolutionized sort of manhood and gendering attributes.

as i dissected previously upon the archetypes of tennse williams protagonists: weakening men in resistance of strong sexually loaded women who are ironically enslaved by their unsatiable desire toward distant unavailable men conflicted with impotence and homosexuality. so williams effortlessly forms a literary garden of homme fatales and women as the saps within the traps of elusive charm boys, opposite to the conventional world of film noir viewing woman as the central object of fatal attraction which men would die for. 1950s is the period for the phallic ladies like joan crawford, bette davis and barbara stanwyck started to fall out of favor as the dizzy blonde and chaste ingenuine female types began to reign, such as marilyn monroe and audrey hepburn when the whole society was enclosed with a wholesome aura demanded by maccarthyism...as for male types, the notion of man-boy occurs along with the sweeping phenomenon of junvenile leisure wears as james dean and marlon brando advocated..my point would be men had been made to demonstrate their side of frailty and also remain favorably charming like paul newman's character in "cat on a hot tin roof", and newman has won the public affection while his character with the play is a wimpish drunk inflicted with misogynistic sex frigidity and potential homosexual tedency, at most of the time, newman's whining and mourning while the voiluptuous elizabeth taylor literily begs him to shag her(pardon the usage of language without euphemism due to the effect i apply) and she doesn't mind he barely pulls the thing off at the drunken state. why wouldn't newman's machismo be doubted and defiled while his character is obviously a frightened loser? perhaps only paul newman could accomplish the task of redeeming such role into public empathy and sympathy by his good looks and his winsome charisma.

some film critic or book writers would claim elizabeth taylor for bringing a new sort of female character who dares to speak out for her rights in her roles of "butterfield 8" and "cat on a hot tin roof", women with strength of life to survive. but one fact they neglec would be: wouldn't taylor's cinematic characters also be pushed around by men? would that be self-deragatory enough to have her role pleading for such petite wish to bed with a man who apparently contempts her? in the film noir cinema of 1940s, men are the saps who are at the sparing mercy of sinister dames whose crotches could dominate the world and high-hat the men with their feminine scents. (pardon the phrases, ha.) wouldn't elizabeth taylor's patronizing womanhood also be a sign of gendering conformity required by the time? why men are so afraid of women, and being warm and beautiful is not enough anymore and you have to apologize for being so to win the heart of men?

at one scene of the movie, taylor is on the verge of cracking up in vulnerabilty, longing for newman's touch to console her, and she even says if you wouldn't make love to me again, i would use a long knife to stick into my heart...all he does is to hide in the restroom and cling by the door to smell his wife's silky pajamas instead of offering her a bit of compassion..the audience is able to buy into that because it's paul newman who is handsome enough to acquire your forgiveness come what may. as the movie poster demonstrates, the woman is leaning over the man desperately while the man glares without responce, so object of desire is the man. but taylor was so beautiful you forget the outrageous reversal of genders. paul newman's character also rebels against his intimidating father no less harsh than james dean, wouldn't that be a new sort of beatnik boyish manhood by defying your daddy and pushing away your beautiful wife like a misogynist who's got to prove he's not threatened or weakened by the feminine charm? elizabeh taylor is surely the most beautiful ever in "cat in the hot tin roof" but she ain't certainly no seductress. paul newman is.

one of the most underrated oscar nominated flicks from anthony minghella. a star-studded flick in the peak of re-visualized vintage glamour in the nobly decayed crime dimensions of writer patricia highsmith's. a story about one of the most capitivating homocidal killers in cinema or suspense novel history: tom ripley, who adores the rich handsome dickie greenleaf who is a man born with a silver spoon, a man who owns nearly everything he longs for. then chameleon ripley transforms into a leech who dries out dickie's life, also a vulture who devours dickie's left-over, horridly a crab-alike parasite who deprives dickie's identify....he's pathologically complicated with all the smolderingly torments beneath his boyish somehow bookish spectackles: repressed sexuality which comes across as intrusive lust for dickie greenleaf, the obliteration of struggled low self-esteem, the merciless detachment to slice out his human pathos just to pull off the scheme of self-protection.....eventually he needs to latch all the demons inside the basement of his dim inner corner, and its key tends to be lost for good without the thrusted trust to anyone as the last scene in the movie refers....

"it's better to be a fake somebody instead of a real nobody"....all the symbolism seems to be obvious such as ripley smothers his intimate pal to death that is to smit the last sense of his remained humanity. and the beat trend jazz dickie is so enamour of stands for his frivolous lifestyle....all the essential classic songs selected in the soundtrack that is a bit too catchy...generally the whole movie is catchy such as its theme, its good-looking cast, its plot hints, its blatantly voyeuristic sensuality(such as ripley peeps dickie's nude in the bathtub)...etc. nothing too mystically hideous, considering its comtemporariness.

it was also jude law's crucial chance to contribute to his overnight success as the main sex subject in this movie. there's something worth tackling about his dickie greenleaf who is a man of whimsical playfulness, a well-to-do self-dubbed beat bohemian who is enslaved by the ecstaticly tumultous jazz, suffering from the eternal fued of lacking any significant paternal recognition that makes him waywardly linger over his elongated adolescence with an undercurent maternal fixation (which reflects on his choice of women...always someone tolerantly appreciates his boyish naivete) but clansdetinely traumatized with such un-retrieved loss of identification, also a man assumingly sheltered from his social status and enormous wealth that prevents him from fledging into maturity, but who wants to grow anyway? growing up takes grim hardship, naturally dickie becomes the envious center for everyone since he has wealth, looks, youth and he's damned popular with ladies.

gwyneth paltrow is adequate as dickie's demure love interest but cate blanchet's loverstrick beguiled socialette is more sympatheticly riveting as ripley's attempted prey of seduction. philip seymour gives amusingly tricky performance as the sleazy friend of dickie's who intuitively detects ripley's orientation.

the talented mr. ripley might be even more engrossing without those straight-down-toward-the-arrow catchiness, but in a way, it's subtly made evaluated in its time. the photographic sceneries are idyllically cozy, the blistening sun scatters everywhere, tastefully shot as minghella's works usually are.