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February 21, 2021

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Lockdown romance a bitter-sweet failure

“MALCOLM & Marie,” at least, looks the part.

Shot in slinky black-and-white, with John David Washington and Zendaya playing a sharply dressed couple just back to their stunning, modernist Los Angeles home, “Malcolm & Marie” has the stylized appearance of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” as well as the cocktails and shouting matches.

But if Edward Albee’s scathing play and Mike Nichols’ scalding screen adaptation used the anger and pain of a boozing couple to burrow brutally into marriage, the domestic fury of writer-director Sam Levinson’s millennial melodrama is glossier and sexier but of far less substance. In self-indulgent dialogue reverberating around ego, art and filmmaking, “Malcolm & Marie” more reflects a Twitter argument brought to life, with film-theory sparring between Malcolm (Washington), a director, and Marie (Zendaya), the young woman who inspired his just-premiered film. For such a well-heeled film, it’s strikingly, frustratingly hollow.

Conceived and shot stealthily during the pandemic, “Malcolm & Marie” has the benefit of feeling fresh at a time when little else does.

At first, Levinson’s camera glides back and forth outside the house, peering through the windows, as Malcolm and Marie return home. It’s 1am in Malibu and Malcolm is amped from the triumphant premiere of his film. “Did you see the audience? I said did you see in the audience?” But Marie is less enthused. In Malcolm’s long list of thank yous, he omitted her name, even though the film — she claims, he disagrees — is about her life as a recovering drug addict.

Credit is only one of the points of contention, as the two exchange body blows in between bouts of romance, bath tubs and mac ‘n cheese. She calls him a fraud.

He needles her stalled career as an actor. But the dominant thread is Malcolm’s ongoing criticism and debate about how his work is received “through a political lens.”

As a black man, he resents critics comparing him to Barry Jenkins when he considers William Wyler a more fitting comparison. “Not everything I do is political just because I’m black,” he says.

Either way, it’s not an especially rewarding game. It comes out self-absorbed, regardless.

As cinematography, “Malcolm & Marie” (shot by Marcell Rév) is great. As cinema, not so much.




 

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