Spoiler: beware of quiet, knife-yielding, humiliated damsels with a class grudge. Or maybe you’d rather sit through Winterbottom’s new film, Trishna, based on the Thomas Hardy classic Tess of the D’eubervilles. Its star, Frieda Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), is very photogenic and has an alluring if distant screen presence. You’ll also get a real feel for India, where the film takes place, that will make the recent The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel seem like a mere postcard in comparison. Shot on location in Jaipur and Mumbai, Trishna is Winterbottom’s third adaptation of Hardy and modern India would seem perfect fodder for a tale of socio-economic cultural comparisons.
Winterbottom (see his excellent Road To Guantanamo and the recent The Trip) fashions a story about a woman from a lower caste, Trishna (Pinto), being swept off her pauper feet by a rich guy who is not only from a higher social plane, he’s not even fully Indian. Only they must sneak and hide their love, which comes well-earned for Jay (Riz Ahmed), who chases after Trishna at great distances more than once. He seems to always show up to rescue her, no matter the circumstances. Once he literally swoops her onto his motorbike just before she is in danger of getting attacked by two ominous men. The film has a habit of cutting to travelogue-style lush scenes of India’s teeming cities or the lush gardens of a plush hotel (owned by Jay’s father) where Jay sets up Trishna with a job. Winterbottom, who wrote the screenplay, has a problem of covering for his inexpressive lead characters with such embellishment. Is he merely accurately expressing Trishna’s diffident deference to Jay, or hiding behind it? A lot of the film meanders with the inertia of the two leads’ non-chemistry. We’re given a somewhat good feel for the oppression of Trishna, at first by her circumstances, and then eventually by Jay. It doesn’t hep a key scene involving Jay’s initial seduction of Trishna occurs off-camera. Then late his movement from great-guy savior to deviant scumbag seems to come out of nowhere, or, more specifically, one (quite understandable) blunder from Trishna that causes Jay to overreact in a way that would have seemed a lot more credible if we’d been given more character development and less atmospheric fluff.
For what it’s worth, Winterbottom also went out of his way to make the film flat in terms of eroticism; he spares no forthrightness after Jay loses his cool and becomes a meaner lover near the film’s conclusion.
All in all, even a misfire from Winterbottom has its moments. It’s a shame they’re couched in what can only feel like filler. The film, listed at 108 minutes, seems at least a half hour longer. There’s only so much scenery we can soak in before we’re on overload, waiting for a character with at least minimal emotional depth to emerge. In Buddhist lore “Trisha” stand for the second noble truth, that of thirst and craving, which cause suffering. Here Trishna’s thirst and craving are barely seen, and even rarer, felt.
2.5 noble truths (out of 5)