Critics can’t decide if Andrew Scott’s Ripley is mesmerising or charmless – exactly as Patricia Highsmith wrote him

• Fresh from All of Us Strangers(2023), Andrew Scott plays the title role in Netflix’s new series Ripley, a miniseries based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley.
• News publisher Out claimed Scott’s Ripley for gayness.
• Highsmith wrote Ripley as having an elusive sexuality.
• Scott’s Ripley is different yet again: an enigma who is both compelling and frightening – connected to sexuality, but resistant to explanations, labels or pigeonholes.

Tom Ripley through the ages

• In 1999, Anthony Minghella made him gay in The Talented Mr. Ripley.
• Minghella asserted that Ripley’s “pathology is not explained by his sexuality”, yet he punishes Ripley through his gayness when he has him kill his lover.
• Refreshingly, Claude Chabrol’s Les Biches, thought to be loosely based on The Talented Mr. Ripley, neither pigeonholes nor punishes its lesbian/bisexual protagonist.
• […] Ripley wouldn’t be comfortable in a gay bar; […] he wouldn’t be comfortable in a straight bar.”

Embracing gayness and fluidity

• Gayness as a whole is not subtext in Zaillian’s production.
• Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) asserts “I’m not queer” in the defensive manner of “someone who absolutely is”, as observed by Digital Spy’s David Opie.
• At the same time, the series shows a sincere commitment to fluidity.
• The choice to embrace fluidity is also strategic as it keeps Zaillian open to sequels that could stick to Highsmith’s original plots.

Scott plays an incalculable Ripley

• Playing a sexual nullity is a departure for Scott.
• To the character of Ripley he brings an ambiguous charisma and a Machiavellian sapiosexuality – sexiness that comes from being very, very intelligent.

• Scott’s one definite statement about Ripley is that “his sexuality or sensuality comes out of his relationship with things — art, clothes, props, music.” Certainly, his Ripley has a love/hate relationship with “things”.
• At the same time, inanimate objects prove to be obstacles as Ripley laboriously cleans up after his impulsive murders.
• There’s a boat he can’t burn or scupper, an elevator that seizes up when he is trying to carry a body downstairs.
• These near-misses generate suspense and anxiety for Ripley, but he is too opaque, alien and other for empathy.

• Depending on whom you ask, his Ripley is either “mesmerizing” or “charmless”.
• Is Scott too successful at playing the incalculable other?

Joy McEntee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.