Andrew Scott Joins the Pantheon of Talented Mr. Ripleys

Now, it seems, such machinations are back in vogue: “Purple Noon,” René Clément’s deeply pleasurable riff on Highsmith, from 1960, is among the Alain Delon movies playing at Film Forum this month, and Steven Zaillian’s “Ripley,” out this week on Netflix, is the latest attempt to mine the books for something new. Andrew Scott, who stars as Tom, is one of our great living actors: witness his performance as the Priest in the second season of “Fleabag,” a perfect piece of television, and his one-man “Vanya,” a remarkable testament to his range, now in limited theatrical release in the U.S. Both are deft, often funny explorations of repressed or otherwise thwarted desire. “Ripley,” by contrast, is determinedly dour. The eight-part series forces viewers to feel the effort of every act, such that the sight of Tom tromping up and down stairs becomes a recurring motif: Zaillian seems more concerned with the stultifying logistics of Tom’s crimes than the rush of getting away with them. We see neither the seductiveness of Dickie’s position nor the complexities of his and Tom’s bond; the show is suffused with an air of paranoia and malice even before things start to go awry. The black-and-white cinematography and the heavy-handed allusions to Caravaggio—another killer on the run in Italy, albeit several centuries prior—only intensify the pretension. It’s a reasonably faithful adaptation in terms of plot—but, as Ripley himself knows, if the intent is to win over your audience, the way you tell the story is more important than fidelity to the facts.SpotlightClassical Music