Ripley Under Ground (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Ripley Under Ground alternatively: Mr. Ripley and the art of killing |
| Original title | Ripley Under Ground |
| Country of production | USA , UK , Germany |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2005 |
| length | 100 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Roger Spottiswoode |
| script | W. Blake Herron , Donald E. Westlake |
| production | Steve Christian , Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre , Marco Mehlitz , Michael Ohoven , Stephen Ujlaki , David Valleau , William Vince |
| music | Jeff Danna |
| camera | Paul Sarossy |
| cut | Michel Arcand |
| occupation | |
| |
Ripley Under Ground (also broadcast on German television under the title Mr. Ripley and the Art of Killing ) is an American-British-German thriller by Roger Spottiswoode from 2005 . The screenplay by W. Blake Herron and Donald E. Westlake is based on the novel Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith , the motifs of which it deals with very freely.
action
The American Tom Ripley lives as an acting student in London. He is in debt, can no longer pay his rent, and the drama school threatens to throw him out after his application documents are exposed as fakes. During a vernissage of his friend Derwatt's painter, his lover Cynthia refuses Derwatt's marriage proposal. The injured Derwatt then sped away in his car and died in an accident. As Derwatt's paintings turn out to be bestsellers, Ripley and his accomplices, including Cynthia and the gallery owner Jeff, decide to hide the artist's death and sell fake paintings under Derwatt's name.
Ripley travels to France, where he has a love affair with a chance acquaintance, the wealthy Heloise Plisson, on whose country estate he hides temporarily. The art collector Neil Murchison becomes suspicious of one of these forgeries and tracks down the gang. He kills Ripley, hits the back of the head in a scramble, and dies. Ripley buries the body in the garden of the Plissons family estate.
Police investigator John Webster is entrusted with the case of the missing art collector. He visits Ripley, whom he strongly suspects, but cannot prove anything because the previously uninitiated Heloise Ripley comes to the rescue at the last minute and removes Murchison's buried body.
Reviews
The US industry service Variety noted that the film was too restless and insecure despite its “sharp-tongued director” and therefore ended “in a no man's land between hysterical satire and slim euro thriller”. Main actor Barry Pepper is not up to his role, the book is probably suitable for a pure adaptation.
In Germany, as in Austria and other European countries, the film did not make it into theatrical distribution, but was only released on DVD for sale. Hans Messias ( film-dienst ) saw an entertaining film adaptation in Ripley Under Ground , which succeeds in "shaping an unsympathetic figure" with lively direction. The film does not “take itself too obsessively seriously as a criminal puzzle game”, but instead interweaves “the set pieces of the genre into casual fun” and comes up with “a number of bizarre directorial ideas”. The performance of the actors is convincing. Sascha Westphal ( Frankfurter Rundschau ) was also full of praise in his short DVD review - Spottiswoode was the first filmmaker to succeed in capturing the black humor of Patricia Highsmith's novels in all its malevolence.
background
The film was shot on the Isle of Man and in London . It had its world premiere on November 6, 2005 at the AFI Film Festival .
literature
- Highsmith, Patricia: Ripley Under Ground . Diogenes, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-257-23414-7 .
Web links
- Ripley Under Ground in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Ripley Under Ground on the website of the film festival afifest.studiosystem.com (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Approval for Ripley Under Ground . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , July 2007 (PDF; test number: 110 798 DVD).
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from April 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ www.countingdown.com ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 14, 2007
- ↑ www.lytrules.com ( Memento of the original of July 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 14, 2007
- ↑ cf. Koehler, Robert: Ripley Under Ground . In: Variety, 21. – 27. November 2005, p. 56
- ↑ cf. Release dates in the Internet Movie Database (accessed on May 15, 2010)
- ↑ cf. Messiah, Hans: Ripley Under Ground . In: film-dienst 8/2008 (accessed via Munzinger Online )
- ^ Westphal, Sascha: DVD Ripley Under Ground . In: Frankfurter Rundschau, October 19, 2007, p. 45
- ^ Filming locations for Ripley Under Ground, accessed June 14, 2007
- ↑ Ripley Under Ground premiere dates, accessed June 14, 2007
