Ripley's Italian Seacoast

The Talented Mr. Ripley has given a dark glamour to the azure waters and breathtaking vistas of cities, islands and villages are along Italy's coast.

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Every so often there's a film that packs so much scenic firepower it inspires people to pack a suitcase and go seek out in person the locations they've visited on-screen. "Our phone didn't stop ringing when 10 showed Bo Derek on those incredible beaches, or later when The Firm showed the spectacular Grand Cayman Islands," says Anastasia Mann, owner of West Hollywood's Corniche Travel. A real wanderlust blockbuster arouses an even more powerful reaction: "Everyone from my own hairdresser to clients I haven't heard from in years have called out of the blue to say, 'I must go right now to where they shot The Talented Mr. Ripley" says Mann, laughing. "You know something truly interesting is happening." It seems that anyone who's seen Ripley's expatriates Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) and Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow) glamorously frittering away time in the fictional Italian seacoast village of Mongibello is vulnerable to sudden impulses to go, money or no money, to where these overprivileged bohos led their jazzy late-'50s lives. All this attention on the coast or Italy is a tribute to the efforts of director Anthony Minghell and production designer Roy Walker, who spent six months scouring the shores of Italy for the locations that proved so perfect in Ripley. "Shoot your film in Italian seacoast cities and they're so haunting and magical, the locales do a lot of the work for you," one veteran DP has said. "They're paradises with a wildly liberated undercurrent." Minghella chose the islands Ischia and Procida to stand in for Mongibello, and selected specific sites in Venice, Naples and Rome for what he calls "an evocation of the mood and feeling of Patricia Highsmith's novel." The director was after a dream of Italy, one fastened in his imagination by the late-'50s films of Fellini, Visconti and Rossellini. Inevitably, the movie also evokes frothy romances like It Started in Naples, the 1960 film in which the wonders of Clark Gable and the Bay of Naples nearly paled next to the wonders of Sophia Loren, who introduced the ditty "Tu Vuo Fa L'Americano,' which is reprised by Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) and Dickie in one of Ripley's nightclub sequences, Ischia, the remote volcanic island where Matt, Jude and Gwyneth spent what director Minghella calls a "frantic" month shooting, is located in the Bay of Naples and has long been famous for its spectacular beaches, thermal baths, lemon groves and ornate churches. The fatalistic beauty of the eternally disintegrating Venice looks specifically created for Ripley's purposes, but then, it lent itself perfectly as well to the carpe diem romantic liberation of Katharine Hepburn in 1955's Summertime, and to the ominous life-altering revelations visited on Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in 1973 s brilliantly creepy Don't Look Now. Whether you have The Talented Mr. Ripley to thank for compelling you to get yourself to seacoast Italy, or whether an earlier film already incited your wanderlust, Tom Ripley himself provides the inspiring evidence that there are few better places on the planet to find yourself and lose yourself.

--Stephen Rebello

Living La Dolce Vita, Ripley Style

Those who want to immerse themselves in an updated version of Tom Ripley's world should launch their adventure from Rome, taking in the fabulously stylish Grand Hotel off the Piazza della Repubblica (where Tom stayed), the Capitoline Museums (from which he surveys the Forum) and the Piazza di Spagna (where he arranged for the "accidental" meeting at Caffè Dinelli of the characters played by Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett and Jack Davenport)--on the way to an all-important stop at Battistoni, the exclusive Via Condotti men's fashion house for a perfectly tailored suit just like the ones Tom learns to wear. Then, to truly live Ripley's la dolce vita, check out the following locations.

1 Procida: This island, 20 minutes by boar from Ischia, provided the location for the exterior of Marge's house and the site where Marge and Tom watch Dickie play a game of boccie. Procida is less frenzied than Ischia, but has grown more popular since providing the backdrop for 1996's international hit Il Postino. A Marge today would stroll beyond the island's ubiquitous lemon groves and private gardens to seek out one of the affordable beach bungalows at Graziella. Then she'd have her spoiled boyfriend take her to Da Michele for astounding, no-frills rood.

2 Palermo: Passing as Naples in Ripley, this city's art deco-style terminal building is where Ripley meets his new friend Meredith Logue (Cate Blanchett) as they're going through customs. The 14th century Chiesa Martorana in Palermo's Piazza Bellini is where Peter Smith-Kingsley (Jack Davenport) rehearses Vivaldi's Stabat Mater. Today, the just-arrived Tom would stay at the old-style, high-ceilinged, affordable palazzo Hotel Gallia. He'd acclimate himself to higher living by dining on the vegetarian delights at Il Mirto e la Rosa, then mix with the celeb-friendly crowd at the disco Candelai.

3 Porto Ercole: From the craggy shore-line in Porto Ercole (standing in for San Remo), Tom watches with careful deliberation as the rock-filled motorboat, in which Dickie was murdered, sinks out of sight. Should such nefarious activities be required of today's Tom, he'd lay low at nearby Livorno, sequestering at the family-run Hotel Cremona and dining on the great riso nero (black rice) at La Cantonata.

4 Ischia: The popular sunbathing and swimming beach Bagno Antonio on this island in the Bay or Naples is where Tom, wearing the now-infamous, queasily citrus-colored Speedo, schemes his way into Dickie and Marge's life. The Dickies of today stay at the lush, multi-flowered Pensione di Lustro (where some of Ripley's crew reportedly stopped); or the family-run, relatively placid Albergo Macri. Today Tom and Dickie would hang at the piano bar at Valentino or at its packed disco, and at nearby rival club Jane. A Marge-Dickie-Tom-type ménage à trois circa 2000 would respond to hunger pangs by hit-ting the off-the-beaten-track Ristorante Zelluso for pizza.

5 Naples: This city passes as Rome in the film, but it's the spectacular and historical Teatro San Carlos where sensitive, if homicidal, Tom Ripley weeps during a stage performance of Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin. Today Tom would seek sweet seclusion at small, tourist-friendly pensions like the Hotel Eden. He'd dine on Neapolitan seafood at the simple, family-owned Trattoria da Maria, and then either seek out sleek disco decadence at Tongue or go hear the catch-as-catch-can jazz at the club Riot.

6 Venice: Tom arrives at dawn in a vaporetto slicing Through the famed Grand Canal Co his three-story palazzo, which was portrayed in the film by the abandoned real-life palazzo Ca' Sagredo. The interior entrance to the manse was shot at Palazzo Mosto, just across the canal from Ca' Sagredo. Marge's arrival in Venice was filmed at the Santa Lucia railroad station. Tom and Peter stroll the Piazza San Marco as their relationship becomes more complex. Tom, Marge and Herbert Greenleaf meet in the Piazza San Marcos chic, historical Caffè Florian. The elegantly grand spot where Tom learns from Dickie Greenleaf's father and the American flatfoot that they do not suspect him of his crimes was actually the magnificent Europa Regina Hotel. If Tom returned to Venice today he could stay at the classic Europa Regina itself or, if in another mood, the Hotel Locanda Fiorira (vine-covered courtyards, oriental rugs) or the absolutely incomparable Hotel Cipriani, one of the worlds most romantic and expensive getaways (where producer Joel Silver held his wedding celebration). Having Learned he was off the hook, Tom might drop into the city's oldest wine bar Do Mori or just hang at the friendly former brewery Antica Birraria La Carte.

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