Jeffrey Wells

Dakota Fanning was a very cute nine-year-old when she played a kidnapping victim in Tony Scott’s Man on Fire (‘04). Now 30, she’s matured into a skilled actress with appealing features — call her mid-range attractive.

As I watched her last night in Ripley (shot in ‘21 when Fanning was 27) I was thinking how some kid actors are just “wow, feel that personality and look at those eyes!” But when they grow up their genetic destiny takes them somewhere else and that knockout quality recedes.

There’s obviously nothing wrong with being a moderately attractive actress with approvable skills, but sometimes getting older doesn’t quite work out in a way that casting agents think it might when the actress is a tyke.

I’m thinking also of the differences between Caroline Kennedy when she lived in the White House vs. the somewhat horsey-faced woman she became as she got into her 30s.

Sometimes it works in the other direction. I was commonly regarded as a dorky-looking, Wayne Newton-ish kid with odd, vaguely Japanese or Keanu Reeves-like features in my early-teen years, but it all turned around when I hit my mid 20s.

I distinctly recall an attractive, sexually active female contemporary telling me when I was 18 or thereabouts that she didn’t think of me as the kind of guy who would have a girlfriend, no offense. She was just being honest in a kind of kidding way.

The casting of 20somethings as college students or even teenagers is common Hollywood practice, but 40ish guys playing characters who look, think and behave like younger, less thoughtful fellows and are therefore less believable — this is less common.

I’m thinking, of course, of the Tom Ripley situation — 47-year-old Andrew Scott playing the titular sociopath in Ripley. The eight-episode series was shot in ‘21 when Scott was 45 or thereabouts. Matt Damon was 28 when he played the same fellow in The Talented Mr. Ripley (‘99). Alain Delon was 24 when he played Ripley in Plein Sud (‘60).

I think Scott’s performance is masterful, but there’s still no hiding the fact that he seems too old to be playing a young opportunistic sociopath who’s more or less floating through life and improvising each new hustle on the fly. We tend to think of 40something guys as being past all that.

Which other older actors else have prominently portrayed characters who should have been played by 20somethings or at least 30somethings?

Robert Redford was 47 when he played the 36-year-old Roy Hobbs in The Natural…he seemed a little too old but Redford’s handsome features and athletic frame made up for that. Redford’s Hobbs is actually less of a stretch than Scott’s Ripley.

Who else?

Deep down Andrew Scott’s Ripley is terrified, of course…waiting for the guillotine to drop. He wears a mostly blank face to protect himself, but who wouldn’t under these circumstances?

Because once Ripley embarks upon his elaborate deception (i.e., pretending to be Dickie Greenleaf) he knows he’ll be unmasked sooner or later.

Because in the world of 1961 photographic capture and proof are a common fact of life, and he knows that Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning) has a few snapshots of Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) lying around her Atrani cottage.

Plus any fan of detective stories knows that sooner or later Inspector Ravini (Maurizio Lombardi) is going to have a major brainstorm by (a) asking Marge for Dickie snaps and (b) asking Dickie’s father to mail a photo or two, and (c) searching for photos taken of Dickie in college and (d) asking the U.S. passport agency to send a copy of Dickie’s passport photo.

Not to mention the eventual publication of Marge’s Atrani book, which Ripley knows from the get-go is going to be half photos and is sure to include a shot or two of Dickie.

The fact that Ravini doesn’t start hunting around for Dickie photos immediately upon beginning his investigation of Freddy Miles’ death…this is a King Kong-sized plotting problem.

Director Steven Zallian’s solution, of course, is to simply ignore it. He just turns off the 1961 reality light switch and calmly maintains that despite the calendar year photos are an exotic invention that average people doesn’t have access to…despite the fact that 60-odd years ago nearly every inhabitant of western civilization owned a Kodak Instamatic or an 8 mm movie camera (or had parents or rich uncles who did) and that snapshots of everyone and everything were fairly ubiquitous.

I watched episode #8 of Ripley last night, and the final few minutes are an obvious set-up for another eight episodes down the road. They’re certainly not an “ending.”

John Malkovich’s performance as the deliciously perverse Reeves Minot is a blessing.

All my life I’ve wanted to experience a total eclipse black-out…a serious Bing Crosby in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court moment..,and if I want it badly enough I can have this tomorrow afternoon.

But I’ll have to drive hundreds of miles for hours and hours plus pay for several tanks of gas and at least one motel sleep-over to get to the sweet spot.

Why couldn’t the eclipse show a little more taste in deciding which areas of the country to temporarily darken? Austin and maybe one or two other towns aside, the eclipse will mostly affect nothing towns and bucolic, bumblefuck backwaters, regions that nobody ever seems to visit or even think about, and that’s really a shame. I’m serious.

Imagine if it hit Boston or the Berkshires or NYC…magnificent.

There’s definitely something different about the highly observant, suffer-no-fools Freddy character in Steven Zallian’s Ripley (Netflix, now streaming).

Played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Anthony Minghella’s quarter-century-old The Talented Mr. Ripley, Freddy is now a gender-fluid fellow played by musician Eliot Sumner, born a bio–female (the parents are Sting and Trudy Styler) and now a non-binary “they.”

Eight and a half years ago Eliot Paulina Sumner, a musician, came out as gay-with-a-girlfriend in a 12.2.15 Evening Standard article.

The Cate Blanchett-resembling Sumner has everyone’s attention now with a Ripley supporting role as the blunt-spoken Freddy, the suspicious-minded writer friend of Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning)…a sharp-witted fellow who’s an arch-antagonist of Andrew Scott’s Ripley.

There were, of course, no uncertain perceptions about Philly’s gender or sexuality in Minghella’s film but there certainly are with Eliot.

Right away you’re thinking there’s something clearly womanish about Freddy…obviously…his voice is thin and reedy and tartly feminine is a Blanchett-sounding way, and his mid ‘60s Beatle-ish hair style is too long for a dude in a JFK-era realm. (The film announces itself as occurring in 1961.) Freddy has in effect been transformed into an exceptional X-factor dyke.

On one hand it’s fascinating that Freddy is portrayed not as a regular brainy dude but as a brainy lesbian strolling around in men’s clothing and wearing 1965 hair that’s half Blanchett-Dylan in I’m Not There and half Paul McCartney.

On the other hand Sumner’s casting violates our basic sense of what constitutes mid 20th Century guy vibes, traits and mannerisms. It therefore throws a monkey wrench into the Ripley engine, and our belief in Zallian’s carefully constructed reality, our faith in this elegant Italian milieu of 60-plus years ago that seems so right in so many hundreds of ways…our trust is slightly shaken.

The Sumner casting is therefore, I feel, intriguing but unfortunate at the same instant. The perversity of what has to be called an act of stunt casting is oddly interesting (jaded Europeans being ahead of the cultural curve), but it’s also an obvious nod and a capitulation to current woke attitudes and sensibilities in the area of gender and sexuality and whatnot.

Sumner’s Freddy absolutely doesn’t fit into 1961 Rome — that’s for sure.

Decider article, 4.3.24:

Last Tuesday (4.2) HE shrugged at the notion of the forthcoming interracial London stage production of Romeo and Juliet…Tom Holland and Frances Amewudah–Rivers…another “woke casting stunt”, “wealthy London liberals will eat this shit up,” etc.

I happened to agree with a reader comment that a Zendaya-like actress would have been a better fit match-wise or looks-wise (i.e., Amewudah-Rivers isn’t quite on Holland’s level). Otherwise any blatantly racist criticisms (I haven’t read any but I’ll take the Jamie Lloyd Company’s word for it) are deeply unfortunate and probably best ignored.

Read more

Due respect for the 151 signatories of today’s “we agree with Jonathan Glazer’s anti-Zionist-overkill Oscar speech” letter, but may I ask what took them so long? The over-one-thousand-signatures letter that sharply disagreed with Glazer’s compassion–for–Gaza–victims speech…that timely letter was posted nearly three weeks ago (3.18). Life is a moving train. Hubba-hubba.

An actual earthquake just happened in Wilton, Connecticut, and apparently all over the tristate area. Not a major shaker but it lasted a good eight to ten seconds. Felt like 5.5 or thereabouts. Reports are calling it a 4.8. Centered in Lebanon, New Jersey.

Out of the blue I sat through a pair of wowser thrillers last night, both mature and well-measured and absolutely not aimed at the popcorn hooligans, and one of them, surprisingly, was a formula-adhering Liam Neeson film.

There’s nothing like the pot high of suddenly seeing a good movie or two on an unexpected (or not necessarily anticipated) basis, and just feeling more and more ripped as they proceed. And you know that most of the low-lifes out there will ignore these films or give them short effing shrift.

These are just iPhone jottings…I’ll expand in a few hours.

Steven Zallian’s Ripley (Netflix, 4.4) is a stunning work of visual art — one of most beautiful monochrome films I’ve seen this century or ever. All hail dp Robert Elswit! I watched episode #1 last night. (Eight episodes in all.) Haunting, quietly eerie and creepy and deliciously atmospheric. A knockout performance by Andrew Scott, and fascinating cameo performance by Kenneth Lonergan. It’s a completely gourmet–level serving, and I loved the careful attention to period detail. (It’s set around the time of Rene Clement’s Purple Noon, which opened in France in March 1960.)

Set during “the troubles” (‘74 or thereabouts), In The Land of Saints and Sinners (which isn’t an especially good title) is a way-above-average Liam Neeson film. Restrained and solemn and well-plotted, and it gets better and better as it moves along. Directed by longtime Clint Eastwood producer Robert Lorenz, it follows the basic Neeson-flick formula but the writing and particularly the character-sculpting are of a very high calibre, and the magnificent Kerry Condon delivers one of the greatest female villain characters ever — a feisty, take-no-shit-from-anyone IRA firebrand. What an actress!