Andrew Scott Is Wasted in Netflix's Stylish But Empty Ripley

The first time Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) lays eyes on a Caravaggio painting is while on a visit to a Neapolitan church with his new friend and budding painter Dickie (Johnny Flynn). Hanging mightily atop the altar, “The Seven Acts of Mercy” casts a spell on the man, whose eyes traverse the artwork with an awe akin to hunger. It is no coincidence that this is the first meeting between Ripley and Caravaggio, and even less of a coincidence that the Italian painter acts as a running thread throughout Ripley.

Caravaggio painted “The Seven Acts of Mercy” shortly after killing a man and fleeing from Rome. In it, the painter united all seven works of corporal mercy according to Catholic tradition, a reflection on the small acts of human kindness that brighten the darkened corners of Naples. Tom and Dickie walk out of the church into the same streets once roamed by the artist, and, although Tom is still awed by the work, he is less inclined to emulate such acts of kindness as he is to receive them. When the church said one should give shelter to travelers, Tom only heard of a free inn. When they said one should feed the hungry, Tom’s stomach roared. When they said bury the dead… Well, that one he could certainly handle.

The Catholic undercurrents of guilt and punishment in Caravaggio’s work — and the artist’s troubling personal life — aren’t the only reason why Steven Zaillian chose the painter as the artistic guiding point for Ripley. The showrunner enlists renowned There Will Be Blood cinematographer Robert Elswit to create the lush black-and-white palette of the series, which evokes Caravaggio’s trademark tenebrism. The technique plays with darkness and light, obscuring certain details to reveal others, guiding one’s gaze towards a carefully chosen truth.

Tom Ripley is also a master of playing with perception. First introduced to the cultural lexicon in 1955 with The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith’s amoral social climber has been brought to screens big and small several times in the decades since. Netflix’s limited series adapts the first book in the Ripley pentalogy, which also inspired classic films such as Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley from 1999 and René Clément’s Purple Noon from 1960.

But, while previous adaptations have gone for the lavish and the beautiful to immerse someone into the world of extravagance and futility that has engulfed a privileged American heir, Ripley chooses to go for the sleekness of noir. The show opens in Rome, where the ringing of church bells cuts through the quiet of the night. Suddenly, it’s a symphony, the blunt thudding of a body dragged down a set of stairs interspersed with the sharp sound of the bells. Cut to six months earlier in 1960s New York, where Andrew Scott’s Tom Ripley maintains a sparse bedroom by running a series of small-time cons.

Naturally, when Tom is approached by a strange man at a bar in the middle of the afternoon, alarm bells ring. But Tom has luck on his side, and the man introduces himself as a private investigator working double-time to find the elusive grifter. He is there on behalf of Herbert Greenleaf, a rich shipbuilder who believes Tom to be great friends with his spoiled heir, who left New York for Italy a few years back never to return. When the two meet a few days later, Greenleaf has a proposition: Would Tom leave his job for a few months and go to Italy to bring Dickie home?

In the era of binge-watching and ever shorter seasons, Ripley swims against the current by demanding patience from its audience. Tom only meets Dickie at the end of Episode 1, and the seven episodes that follow not only grow slower in pace but longer in runtime, with the finale running at a taxing 74 minutes. Not to tap into runtime police territory, but there is not much of a payoff in Zaillan’s gamble. For those familiar with the plot of The Talented Mr. Ripley, the series unravels as a stylistic exercise in literal translation, devoid of the playfulness of previous adaptations. When it comes to those who are hearing of Ripley for the very first time, the original might seem as little more than a contrived insight into the lavishly empty lives of the rich.

Having Andrew Scott as the titular character is just as big a gamble, and it doesn’t fully pay off either. While the Irish actor is one of the greatest of his generation, beautifully threading the lines between lust and sorrow in both Fleabag and Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, turning the twentysomething Ripley from the books into a middle-aged man deprives the character of the particular kind of impulsiveness of the young. (Even if mentions of age are scarce, Scott is visibly not in his twenties, and the series is set 10 years after the first book.) Think of Matt Damon’s boyish joy when brought to the stage of a jazz club to play alongside Jude Law’s Dickie in Minghella’s film or Alain Delon’s boisterous (and, of course, painstakingly naïve) confidence in Clément’s take.

Turning Ripley into a man in his 40s sends the character into mid-life crisis territory, with impulsivity becoming cold calculation. It diverts from the mood of the book, and, coupled with the bleak feel of the series, ends up in an entirely different sphere. Flynn feels similarly miscast not only age-wise but tonally, playing Dickie not as the cool, vain heir Highsmith paints in the original but as a pathetic, lethargic boy stuck in the body of a grown-up. He wants to be a painter but lacks talent entirely, filling his spacious studio with a gallery dedicated to mediocrity. “I’m not a great painter yet, but I enjoy it,” he says in a display of false modesty meant to extract fake compliments from an equally fake Tom.

There is no sense of joy to Dickie either, perhaps a consequence of the monochrome, which sucks much of the allure out of summertime Italy. Gone are the orange hues of clay and the deep blues of the Mediterranean Sea. Bodies look pale and fragile, void of the shimmering tan that had entire generations lusting over Law’s Dickie and Delon’s Ripley. Flynn’s Dickie is the product of Italian winters, and therefore much more muted and introspective. It makes Tom’s fascination with the playboy superficial, driven by envy over lust. In this, Ripley feels somewhat frigid, the constant efforts to comment on the titular character’s sexuality — a looming theme in the novel and all following adaptations — remaining shallow.

Yearning, here, is psychological, not carnal. A desire to inhabit another’s body not through consummation, but annihilation — two becoming one through the destruction of the other. Dakota Fanning’s Marge, Dickie’s friend-turned-lover and the one to inflame Ripley’s jealousy, feels just as cold. Fanning plays the socialite with a pointed distance from the very beginning, a shield that feels as impenetrable to Dickie as it does to Tom. There is no charm to Marge, not even a tentative shot at it. Like Dickie, she wants to be a successful creative (a writer in this case) but lacks the talent. Worse, she doesn’t even seem to have Dickie’s frantic drive. She sits by the window of her Italian writer’s retreat stringing poorly written sentences together and periodically venturing outside to try to capture the beauty that surrounds her but is painfully oblivious to its essence.

The remainder of the cast is just as lackluster, except for Eliot Sumner’s Freddie, who stands out for the wrong reasons. Excruciatingly over-performed, Dickie’s intrusive friend, once played with such incredible refinement by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, is turned into walking and talking nails on a chalkboard by the No Time To Die actor. Stripped of a key sense of threat, the character fails to amp the tension of Ripley’s midway point, signaling a downward spiral instead of ramping up the game of cat and mouse.

If there is one saving grace, it is Elswitt’s lush cinematography which, although confined to the monochrome that feels much of a disservice to the story, does more for the audience’s understanding of this Ripley than any line of dialogue in the entire series. Tom is constantly framed from a distance, seen through statues, staircases and doors, a framing that turns the viewer into a detective who follows the slippery man from afar, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. It is Elswitt who edges Ripley the closest to the thriller it was conceived as, and it is a mighty shame to have it wasted on a series that sets such a hungry eye on style it forgets the substance of Highsmith’s iconic literary work.

Ripley is now streaming on Netflix. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Rafa is a film programmer and journalist with words on Variety, BBC Culture, Sight & Sound and more. You can find her @rafiews.