The thing that makes René Clément's Purple Noon so delicious is that Philippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet), the man who gets murdered and has his identity stolen by Tom Ripley (Alain Delon), is more of an entitled asshole than Ripley. In a strange way, we want Ripley to kill him and assume his life. After all, Philippe is an abusive womanizer (he destroys his girlfriend's manuscript in a jealous rage by throwing it into the ocean), and gleefully takes advantage of people less fortunate than him. Really, the only unfortunate thing about Purple Noon is that Clément loses his nerve and ends the film with Ripley essentially getting caught. I guess within the context of the film this ending sort of makes sense, but it isn't in keeping with the Ripley character. Side note: I've never seen so much film grain in a digital copy of a movie (I watched it for free during a weekly Criterion festival on hulu).
8/10
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