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As Highsmith begins the story of Tom Ripley in the first of the five books she featured him in, he's riding out a New York autumn, vaguely taking advantage of a circle of contacts whose means are far above his while working scams almost as an amusement. He meets up with the father of a spoiled rich acquaintance named Dickie Greenleaf, who has decamped to Italy with dreams of being an artist. (Minghella makes Dickie an aspiring jazz musician.) Dickie's mother is ill, and his father, who wants him back, offers to pay Tom's fare to Europe, plus expenses, if Tom will try to persuade Dickie to return. Pressing this tenuous connection, Tom travels to Italy and inserts himself into Dickie's life, precipitating a rift between him and his girlfriend. When it becomes clear that Dickie has no intention of going back -- and that his recalcitrance will mean the end of the good life Tom has settled into -- Tom methodically plans Dickie's murder, executes it and takes over Dickie's identity. After the murder, Highsmith shows Tom living as Dickie and, when that becomes impossible, transferring Dickie's riches to his own coffers.

The Talented Mr. Ripley Directed by Anthony Minghella Starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett and Philip Seymour Hoffman

In outline, the book sounds like a noirish parable of class resentment -- and Tom, who has been brought up in shabby circumstances by an unloving aunt, is certainly eaten up with envy over the money and the opportunities Dickie takes for granted. But that envy is Highsmith's pretext for rooting around in the mind of a coolly detached psychopath. Tom is running deceptions and con games and screwing with people's minds long before he gets a chance at Dickie Greenleaf's money. (And he continues doing so in the books that follow, long after he is able to take the good life for granted.)

Minghella must have envisioned Tom as something like a murderous version of Montgomery Clift's George Eastman in "A Place in the Sun." As played by Matt Damon, Tom is the kid who's got everything going for him but money. His charm and good looks and good manners allow him to fit in easily among people who, if they knew his background, wouldn't give him the time of day. In adapting the novel, Minghella has made Ripley both nice and pitiable. When he kills Dickie (Jude Law), it's purely on impulse -- he's only reacting to Dickie's hurtful remarks about his being a leech. It doesn't seem to occur to Minghella that he is a leech; in the book, Dickie's girlfriend, Marge, picks up on the creepy way Tom gloms onto Dickie (not to mention Tom's attraction to Dickie), but Minghella misses it.

He does add a few fancy touches meant to convey Tom's splintered personality: the literally splintered views of him in the title sequence (so reminiscent of the work of movie titles designer Saul Bass); a shot of Dickie's face while Tom is saying, "This is my face"; a later shot of Tom's head above the top of a standing mirror in which Dickie's body is reflected. But for much of the movie, Tom is just an awkward kid given the chance to lead the life of Riley (we even get to see him crying at the opera) and then cruelly shut out when he ceases to amuse Dickie -- and when Dickie becomes embarrassed by Tom's presence among his posh friends.

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