★★★☆☆ Long before Matt Damon and Jude Law drenched their golden locks in the sun of southern Italy in the late Anthony Minghella's superb The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), René Clément - who can be placed at the forefront of the French New Wave - tackled Patricia Highsmith's famous novel with the elegant Plein Soleil (1960). From the off, we're provided with little prologue and thrown into the heady delights of Rome, where best buddies Tom Ripley (the blue-eyed Alain Delon, for whom this was his breakthrough film before going on to work with Antonioni) and Phillip Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet) gallivant around the city picking up floozies.
Before long, their friendship sours and Tom, spurned by Phillip's affections, grows envious of his friend's wealth. This culminates in a plot by Tom to kill and assume the identity of his affluent former amie. Whilst Clément was the first to adapt Highsmith's inaugural...
Before long, their friendship sours and Tom, spurned by Phillip's affections, grows envious of his friend's wealth. This culminates in a plot by Tom to kill and assume the identity of his affluent former amie. Whilst Clément was the first to adapt Highsmith's inaugural...
- 9/10/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
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