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Bartholomew (30)


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My take on the meaning of Sex and Lucía View all posts >


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Intentionally seeking out Meredith would only have benefited Tom if he could arrange a subsequent meeting between Meredith and Marge. However, he didn't know that Marge was in Rome, so setting up that meeting would have been a lot more complicated. Suppose he did manage to pull that off. Eventually, either someone would report Dickie missing or the boat would be found and linked to Dickie. The police would question Marge, and she would give them Meredith's name. Although Meredith would be an eyewitness to Dickie being alive after San Remo, there was a huge risk that the police might show her a photo of Dickie. Then she would become a witness to Tom impersonating Dickie after he was last seen alive in San Remo. Hotel staff might mistake a photo of Dickie for Tom as Dickie, but anyone who knew either of them well wouldn't, so the safer option would be to avoid Meredith. That risk was also present the way events transpired in the movie. But, Tom had to come up with a plan quickly and maybe didn't have time to think things all the way through. No, there wasn't time. Rana screamed, the glass broke, and the neighbors heard the noise. By the time they got to the stairwell, the old guy had already run down. He wasn't a rapist anyway; just a feeble old man who wandered into the wrong apartment by mistake and fled as soon as he realized it. That's why Emad let him go with just a slap. They were both 25 in the novel but are older in this adaptation. Dickie's passport says he was born in 1922, making him 36, and Ripley seems to be a few years older. One reason they may have made the characters older is that they specifically wanted to cast Scott. The novel gives you Ripley's inner monologue, but you can't do that in film unless you use a clumsy voice-over. Without that, you have to rely on the character's facial expressions, except that Ripley's expressions were much too controlled or outright faked for the benefit of others. But Scott was able to do a remarkable job of conveying Ripley's thoughts through his eyes alone. According to Dickie's passport, he was 36 (born in 1924). Ripley's false Tim Fanshaw passport made him a bit older (born 1922), but obviously that might have been off by a few years. They didn't know for sure the kid was dead until Vaughn checked him. If they had just left, they'd have to carry the guilt of not knowing whether they could have saved his life. And at the manslaughter trial, the fact that they had been so callous would have been used against Vaughn, resulting in a longer sentence. She fell before Owen could reach her, and Owen knows it. When they meet after, Larry says "You killed my wife" and Owen replies "No I didn't... Yes I did." Nah, Margaret's house was in Hawaii and Owen flew there (shown by a brief shot of a jet flying across the screen). The boat was just from one island to another. The scene shows his family's financial situation and his concern about their financial well-being after he dies. They already depend on his wife's income to such an extent that, despite having such a lecherous boss, she can't afford to quit. Later that day, he tells his wife that he wished she didn't have that job, but she replies that they need the money. They had come up before... Marge had her photos published in Oggi, but I guess Ravini and his assistant don't read that. It would have taken months for Marge's book to be published, so Ripley had plenty of time to pack up his Picasso and disappear. He was smart enough to realize that living as Tom Ripley would be extremely risky. And anyway, back in 2015, the producers of Ripley were reportedly planning to adapt all 5 Ripley books for TV. So hopefully there are several more seasons in development. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/patricia-highsmiths-ripley-book-series-797465/ View all replies >