#anyway. freddie miles bi king 👑🥰

[philhoffman]

This week’s Freddie Miles Monday Monday Philm is one of PSH’s most iconic performances, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), dir. (the late, great) Anthony Minghella.

Since I’ve been working through PSH’s films in chronological order this time and was already in the mid-90s by June, I totally expected to reach Ripley over the summer (it’s such a perfect summer movie after all), but Phil did so damn much in 1998 and 1999 I’m only barely squeezing it in before the seasons turn. However, it works out great because all of this weekend’s Venice Film Festival coverage totally put me in the mood for Italy!

I always forget how much I love this movie until I’m watching it again. It has such a feeling, a 1950s period piece of course but also such a 1990s product of its times. Jude Law is impossibly beautiful, even Matt Damon charms me here, and the shifts from warmth and opulence to fear and agitation are so wonderfully balanced.

Freddie Miles is such a libertine, and an absolutely delightful one. The cleverest American in Italy but unfortunately the most arrogant, too. I think it’s funny how Phil always spoke of this movie as such a vacation — working one or two days a week then spending the rest of his time eating his way through Italy with Cate Blanchett and her husband — yet it’s one of his most iconic and fascinating characters. He was filming Flawless at the same time in late 1998 — Joel Schumacher accommodated Phil’s Ripley schedule so he flew back and forth between New York and Italy when necessary — and I wonder if that influenced Freddie’s flamboyance at all? On the one hand he’s so so campy (the wrists, the way he moves), but his voice is also low and rumbling and bored, Phil is leaning into his vocal fry here (the way he did in Patch Adams and will again in Almost Famous).

The apartment/piano scene is just the best. In one of the special features on the DVD, Jude Law says that’s his favorite scene of the film. The tension is incredible, I’ve probably watched it over a dozen times and it still keeps me on edge.

Also — Philip Baker Hall is always such a nice, solid surprise at the end of this film. His screen presence has the same quality as PSH’s — he gives the impression that we’re dropping in on the life and times of a real person rather than a character, someone who will go on with their existence even after these two hours we get to see them have ended. Really great cast all around.