Ripley
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The sun has risen in Rome, and Tom Ripley is busy with errands.
His to-do list is filled with the kind of responsibility particular to the unburdened.
Preparing to get settled into his new life, Tom visits an apartment.
The apartment is spacious, light-filled, and tastefully decorated, with beautiful views of the capital.
But Toms ability to forge signatures and impersonate people was his work all along.
Watching him bang away on the keyboard is like watching an artist at work.
Coming home armed with these new supplies, he does a little painting.
But the art form underlying all the others is more insidious.
Tom is an actor he is constantly performing Dickie.
Just as well, Toms Dickie Greenleaf is an interpretation.
Tom as Dickie is Dickie if Dickie were nothing more than a concept, an idea.
Then, the telephone, and finally, a knock on the door.
A British voice on the other side calls out Dickies name: Of all people, its Freddie Miles.
Though heavy in implication, their conversation is stilted, colored by their mutual distrust.
As Freddie, Eliot Sumner has impossibly large shoes to fill.
Finally, Freddie eventually decides to leave and venture to catch Dickie at the cafe.
Freddie comes back upstairs.
Unlike Dickie, Freddie doesnt plead: Hes not alive for long enough.
He pours more alcohol into Freddies system, burns some cigarettes, rehearses his story.
Hes had a lot to drink, Tom laughs nervously.
He finally manages to put Freddie in the car.
He drives him out to a dim-lit, tree-lined street way past the Colosseum.
What follows is a clumsy back-and-forth that recalls the bit with the stairs that Zaillian established in the pilot.
As he cleans, he is watched by a cat who is adorable but definitely knows too much.
On the way home, he drops Freddies passport in a gutter.
In the novel, Highsmith emphasizes Toms frustration with his murder of Freddie.
Postscript
Is anyone else wishing to have a good look at this mythical Bob Delancey?
It made me LOLandalso cringe so hard I literally closed my eyes and wentaarghhh.
