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Movie Review: Mr. Malcolm’s List (2022)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Buy the novel Mr. Malcolm’s List at Amazon

Mr. Malcolm’s List releases in US theaters July 1, 2022

Freida Pinto executive produces and stars in the Georgian era romance Mr. Malcolm’s List, based on the novel by Suzanne Allain (who also wrote the screenplay). The film has all the trappings of a mannered period drama, but it’s not as witty as it could be.

London, 1820s. Julia Thistlewaite (Zawe Ashton) is aging out of her desirability as a marriage partner. She gets her hopes up when London’s most eligible bachelor Mr. Jeremy Malcolm (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) escorts her to the opera but is humiliated when he declines to ask her out again. She’s further incensed when her cousin Lord Cassidy (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) discovers that Mr. Malcolm has a list of requirements for a prospective bride, and that Julia was eliminated for being unable to hold an intelligent conversation.

Julia concocts a plan to trick Mr. Malcolm into falling in love with a seemingly ideal woman, only for the woman to produce a list of her own and dump him, paying back Julia’s humiliation in kind. Her childhood friend Selina Dalton (Pinto) — a pretty pastor’s daughter from the country, and an unknown in London society — is the perfect candidate for Julia’s scheme. Selina reluctantly agrees to help.

Upon her arrival in London, Selina is immediately beset by suitors. Besides Mr. Malcolm — whom Selina suspects is not the villain Julia believes him to be — handsome Captain Ossory (Theo James) also approaches her, fulfilling his late aunt’s wish for the two of them to meet. The attention paid to Selina doesn’t escape Julia’s notice, and she realizes her plan may not have been so brilliant after all.

Mr. Malcolm’s List meets most of the requirements for this kind of period romantic comedy drama. The costumes and sets are fancy. The actors are all good-looking. The dance at the masquerade ball is steamy, despite the fact that the participants’ physical contact is limited to holding hands. The plot unfolds at a good clip.

Yet the interactions between the characters leave a lot to be desired. Conversations lack a crisp back-and-forth exchange (2016’s Love & Friendship offers a good example of how it should be done). First-time director Emma Holly Jones and editor Kate Hickey leave too much dead air within conversations. Allain’s dialogue also needs punching up. Characters say obvious or straightforward things but react as though they’ve uttered something much more clever (Julia is especially guilty of this).

There’s also a character who exists as comic relief — Julia’s servant John (Divian Ladwa) — who never says or does anything funny enough to deserve the screentime he gets.

Mr. Malcolm’s List is not a stand-out in its genre, but it is a passably good example of it. The film’s shortcomings are less obvious once the plot really gets rolling.

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Movie Review: Trishna (2011)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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It’s gratifying when a story that’s over a century old can be reset in modern times and still feel as fresh as when it was originally written. Given the heartbreaking nature of the source material, Trishna — a retelling of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles — is all the more depressing because of its continued relevance.

British writer-director Michael Winterbottom sets Trishna in modern-day Rajastan. The beautiful title character, played by Freida Pinto, is spotted working at a hotel by a British non-resident Indian named Jay (Riz Ahmed), who’s on a road trip with his friends. Jay’s wealthy father has sent his son to India to manage a luxury hotel. Jay would rather produce movies in Mumbai, using his father’s money, of course.

When Trishna and her father are injured in an accident that destroys her family’s jeep — their sole source of income — Jay hires Trishna to work at his family’s hotel in far-away Jaipur. She becomes her family’s breadwinner, but at a cost. One night, lecherous Jay takes advantage of her. Trishna flees home to an unexpectedly cold welcome: the family depends on the money she earns. This sends her right back into Jay’s clutches.

Hardy’s novel was printed with the subtitle: “A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented.” Trishna likewise presents a portrait of a complete person, and Pinto is portrays the character as she really is. As maddening as it is every time you wish Trishna would just run away, it’s clear that she can’t without sacrificing her family.

Country-girl Trishna’s minimal education limits her opportunities to earn money independently. Education becomes a theme as Trishna scolds the younger female members of her family to stay in school. Education is their only hope for a future away from their unsympathetic father. He delivers the cruelest blow of the film when he tells Trishna that the whole town knows she’s the family’s breadwinner, and not him. It’s an accusation, not a compliment, despite the fact that she’s just obeying his orders.

Jay is an amalgam of the characters Alec and Angel from Tess of the d’Urbervilles. The combination produces a villain both entitled and flighty, growing more monstrous the more bored he gets, resentful of his own familial obligations. Given the time limitations of a movie, I thought the combination made sense and worked well.

What didn’t work for me was the choice to have co-producer Anurag Kashyap and his wife, actress Kalki Koechlin, appear in the film as themselves during scenes when Jay is in Mumbai trying to become a producer. The closing credits list their characters as “Anurag” and “Kalki” rather than “Himself” or “Herself,” so I suppose there’s room to argue that they’re just playing a director named Anurag and an actress named Kalki.

It’s a gimmick that will go unnoticed by people unfamiliar with Bollywood films, but their scenes stuck out like a sore thumb to me because Kalki is totally obnoxious in the film. She may have just been putting on an act, but if that’s the case, give her character a different name.

The problem is that Kalki Koechlin is one of my favorite actors. I don’t read gossip columns or actor interviews unless they’re specifically talking about their jobs. The less I know about actors personally, the more I can believe them as different characters. The lasting image I take away from Trishna — accurate or not — is that Kalki Koechlin seems like a jerk, and I don’t want to think that about her.

Again, I don’t know if it’s an accurate perception, but why does she have to appear in the film as herself? It is a mistake that taints an otherwise solid film.

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