It's a cold and elusive film, and we're already familiar with the genius ripley novel and Anthony Minggra's version, but the French-style light ambiguity that René Clement's The Wretched Sea of Wrath injects into the story still feels strange.
The novel Genius Ripley by Patricia Haysmith was published in 1955 and was initially regarded only as pure entertainment. Later, it became apparent that the depraved fantasies in the book could be understood as a postwar American version of the Count of Monte Cristo, or at least to make postwar Americans feel empathy for Tom Ripley's sense of deprivation and the infinitely inflated desire.
"The Wrath of the Sea" is a story that transcends moral judgment. Tom Ripley, a clever and cunning American diner; Philip Green River, an arrogant and nasty playboy, starts out as an unequal friendship full of, but then the story takes a sharp turn for getting rid of the desire to get rid of the self, stealing identities, and murder. But it must be noted that our "anti-hero" Tom Ripley is by no means a demon, not a sample for psychiatrists to analyze clinically, he is just paranoid about wanting the best of everything – but at the cost of deceiving or destroying others. At the end of the novel, Ripley's victory points out a truth: you can get everything you want, as long as you are willing to kill and smart enough to cover up the crime.
