![]() Rév has worked with Levinson and Zendaya on Euphoria, and there’s a strong sense of aesthetic brashness to their work. Part of this is in the way that Levinson and cinematographer Marcell Rév shoot the film. Malcolm and Marie is not literally a pandemic movie, but it feels like one. Their shared world is small, and they each find the gravity of the other inescapable. Malcolm and Marie are trapped in a confined space together. Nevertheless, the spectre of the pandemic hangs over the film. Unlike other films made during the outbreak, like Songbird or Locked Down, the film is not built around the familiar conceit of a virus forcing characters into close quarters with one another. Malcolm and Marie is not a film about the pandemic. Even when Marie disappears into the night, she cannot escape Malcolm – or herself. Malcolm and Marie occasionally ventures outside the house into the garden, but there is always a sense that space is finite. Indeed, as the credits roll, the camera is waiting for them to return home their car pulls over the hill and towards the house, as if watching the pair arrive unsuspecting into some monstrous trap. Shot early in the pandemic, the film unfolds entirely in and around the house that the title characters share. Most immediately and most obviously, Malcolm and Marie looks great. Malcolm and Marie is a series of self-serious monologues delivered in the aesthetic of a (very pretty) Calvin Klein commercial.Īs ever, the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. More than that, Levinson seems to use the film as an opportunity to work through his own issues as a promising (and privileged) young filmmaker who feels like he has not necessarily been given the critical respect that he deserves. On the other extreme, critics have been quick to argue that Malcolm and Marie is an indulgent mess anchored in a grossly unlikeable and shallow protagonist that never digs beneath the skin of its central characters. It is the kind of film that invites comparisons to works like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Boys in the Band or even something like Autumn Sonata: characters trapped in a confined space, with the drama ready to boil over. On one extreme, some critics have been quick to laud Sam Levinson’s black-and-white character study as a surprise late addition to the awards race, a bracing old-fashioned character drama anchored in two compelling performances that interrogates a relationship that never seems certain whether it will implode or explode. The reactions to Malcolm and Marie have been divided, to the say the least.
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