Netflix's 'Ripley' — Caravaggio, queer glances, and pictorial piazzas

Patricia Highsmith's confounding Tom Ripley is no stranger to screen adaptations. The mysterious and perhaps repressed bisexual con man has been front and center of several interpretations.

From the great French actor Alain Delon's libertine Tom in 1960's "High Noon" to Matt Damon's boyish charismatic take in 1999's "The Talented Mr. Ripley," and arguably even spawning his own fan-fic with Barry Keoghan in "Saltburn," there have been plenty of Tom Ripleys and fittingly so.

The new eight-episode limited series from Netflix stars the beloved Andrew Scott fresh off "All of Us Strangers," one of the most discussion-worthy queer films of the 2020s, in a dark, calculating, and alluring run at the character. The series adapts the Richard "Dickie" Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) affair that trots all across Italy from the first novel.

Hired by Dickie's very wealthy father to venture from New York City to Atrani, Italy to convince Dickie to put an end to his endless life of leisure abroad and return home, Tom, a professional swindler with a plethora of fake identities, immediately seizes the opportunity to substitute his own legal issues in New York with adventure abroad.

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