Queering the Oscars: The Delicious Costumes of "The Talented Mr. Ripley"

Team Experience has been looking at LGBTQ+ related Oscar nominations. Tonight we're serving lewks!

By Christopher James

For a movie with iconic nude scenes, the costumes of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) are just as memorable and titillating. It’s fitting that the Oscars honored the incredible work of costume designers Ann Roth and Gary Jones for the film, which should’ve shown up in more categories than the five it was nominated for. Though the actual Oscar went to Lindy Hemming’s period-specific and gloriously gaudy work in Topsy-Turvy, we’re still cheering on the sidelines for Ripley.

Let's count down the 10 queerest looks from the movie...

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Great Moments in Gay - The Talented Mr. Ripley - Bathtime with Dickie

In honor of Pride Month, we're highlighting a few Great Moments in Gay. Here’s Christopher James

Chess has never been this sexy.Few movies are as sexy as The Talented Mr. Ripley.  John Seale’s cinematography holds its gaze on each of the beautiful stars throughout the movie. Sex drips off the screen at every moment. Though the film is predicated on the “murderous gay” trope in the end, Minghella and company do a great job on establishing and defining its characters attractions. The bathtub scene between Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf is not a “Great Moment in Gay” just because you see Jude Law’s penis. It is doing dramatic work too, illuminating the power dynamics between Tom and Dickie and their characters, too. Plus, it bears repeating, it’s incredibly hot.

Spoilers and NSFW Images to Follow…

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Streaming Roulette, June: Streets of Fire, Primary Colors, and The World to Come

Yes it's time for another round of streaming roulette where we point out titles that are new(ish) to streaming and just for fun, freeze frame them at totally random places in the scroll bar and whatever comes up we share. Let's go...

I think 'Oh, if I'm self aware about being a douchebag, it... it... it... will somehow make me less of a douchebag.' But it doesn't. Self awareness does not absolve anyone of anything. Am I balding?

Bo Burhnam Inside
A new comedy special from the writer/director of Eighth Grade and the co-star of Promising Young Woman. We've heard good things but haven't yet screened...

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The Furniture: Death by Taste in The Talented Mr. Ripley

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on the images for magnified detail)

As we gear up for a Patricia Highsmith centennial, here’s a not-exactly-fun fact. Only one adaptation of her work has been nominated for Best Production Design at the Oscars: The Talented Mr. Ripley. (An earlier version of this article erroneously stated that Carol had also been nominated for this award, as the author had unconsciously, but happily, written The Danish Girl out of his memory. Carol was nominated for costume design, not production design.)

Production design is central to Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of the first Ripley novel, given that so much of the plot hinges upon taste. The young Tom (Matt Damon) ingratiates himself to Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) with his self-trained taste in jazz. Freddie Miles’s (Philip Seymour Hoffman) knowledge of his friend Dickie’s taste in furniture is what gets him killed. Ripley’s games of subterfuge and impersonation depend upon his understanding of style and class - and his own fluctuating taste in other people will lead him to the film’s violent end.

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The Furniture: The Nest and Its Not-Haunted House

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on the images for magnified detail)

Don’t marry an investment banker!

This, as far as I can tell, is the central message of Sean Durkin’s The Nest. And it’s good advice! Rory O’Hara (Jude Law) is a Gordon Gekko without any of the charm, a stiff Englishman determined to perform his financial success in front of a vaguely imagined audience of the rich and powerful. His wife, Allison (Carrie Coon), is miserably along for the ride. It’s a period piece, but it’s laser focused on toxic aspects of our culture that certainly haven’t gone away. The ‘80s never ended, not really.

And so we watch as Allison and her two children are dragged from their house in the US, already their third home in 10 years, and across the pond to an enormous old mansion in Surrey. Rory’s determination to make it big back in the UK upends everything, from Allison’s equestrian interests to their daughter’s gymnastics. I bring this up because it’s one of our few glimpses at the life before, represented in wide spaces like the sun-dappled walls of the stable and the well-lit, colorful gym...

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