Starring: Alain Delon, Marie Laforêt, Maurice Ronet
Two Americans, Philip Greenleaf (Ronet) and Tom Ripley
(Delon) are living it up in Rome whilst Philip has been offered $5000 to return
to San Francisco. Tom, Philip and Philip's girlfriend Marge (Laforêt) decide to
go yachting but when Marge leaves the boat, Tom kills Philip and assumes his
identity when he reaches shore.
Having been restored, Plein Soleil has been re-released
into cinemas. A French-language adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel, The
Talented Mr. Ripley (which also had a better known film adaptation in 1999 with
Matt Damon and Jude Law) Plein Soleil is a sultry and intriguing film that
features a great lead performance from Alain Delon as the handsome, charming
and devious Tom Ripley. Although the American origins are definitely strained
by the European nature of the film (the characters all speak either Italian or
French with one character briefly speaking English, despite the main characters
still having Anglophonic names) the film has a glamorous sense of cool and even
nudges in some good black comedy. The Nino Rota score is also pleasingly
eclectic (and some pieces bare clear comparisons with Rota's later work in The
Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part 2 (1974)) and overall, it's an
impressively cool piece.
Next time, a Sneak Preview of English hard-rock band, Def
Leppard's series of performances at the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel in Viva
Hysteria!
No comments:
Post a Comment