MALCOLM & MARIE Review
Picture this: the night is pitch black outside; you’re in a beautifully spacious yet aesthetically cold home; a filmmaker and his girlfriend are on the brink of self-destruction, constantly arguing (then reconciling) between every room they can get into. The tension is palpable but these people keep screaming and cursing and yelling and the threat of some kind of emotional and/or physical explosion is on the horizon and you can’t leave, you can only watch. At this point you realize you aren’t stuck in some high class trash situation but watching one on screen (thankfully), namely writer/director Sam Levinson’s stylishly self-indulgent MALCOLM & MARIE, and you tremble in terror wondering just how much longer you have before the events onscreen are over.
In a vacuum, a film like this holds promise. It’s a stripped back, single-location, acting display that allows two up and coming performers to dig into the uneasy relationship between an arrogant filmmaker and his on-the-edge girlfriend. Simple yet loaded with emotional and thematic weight on paper, yes, but as Mr. Levinson demonstrates, a hard act to actually pull off in any way that warrants its 95 minute runtime. From its first few frames, where the opening credits are slyly visualized as those retro opening credits of yesteryear, MALCOLM & MARIE, much like its two subjects, wants you to be fully aware of its presence even if it turns out that said presence happens to be grating as hell. Throughout the entirety of the film, Mr. Levinson utilizes Marcell Rev’s classical framing and camerawork to detail an elegant world filled with two vulgar and vicious people. They are, as you would guess, the eponymous Malcolm (John David Washington) and Marie (Zendaya); a pair of star crossed lovers who have been through their fair share of ups and downs as a couple but seemingly find a moment of celebration after arriving to their home following a well-received screening of Malcolm’s newest film. Of course, it turns out that Malcolm and Marie (and Sam Levinson) are more than happy to talk about how fucked up each of them (and their relationship as a whole) is more than anything else, leading to a night of dialogue laden with overbearing curse words and piteous character reveals.
Surrounded by ear-catching needle drops and impressionable shots, Mr. Washington and Ms. Zendaya are left to hassle with Levinson’s script that addresses everything from volatile relationships to the pitiful qualities of film reviewers nowadays (what a group of assholes those guys are, huh?). Given free reign to talk about anything, Levinson and his characters chew into their diatribes with an energy that goes past “entertainingly dickish” straight towards “eye-rolling pretentiousness”. Certainly a feature more than a bug, the characters of Malcolm and Marie are surely supposed to be damaged and/or highly flawed protagonists, so it would make sense for the viewer to not necessarily view them in the best of lights. That being so, it shouldn’t feel like a film and its characters are actively trying to steer you away from it with intentional obnoxiousness. Like an unseen (and shackled) guest still waiting on their Uber, watching MALCOLM & MARIE accurately recreates the hair-pulling sensation of being in a room with two people who hate each other yelling at one another. It’s not a very fun time, even in a “watching a car wreck” type of way.
Levinson should get some credit for tackling — very loudly — some interesting topics of discussion, such as the way black filmmakers and their works are sometimes over-interpreted by white critics. Indeed, the writer/director’s dips in the totally-not-his-own-views analysis of filmmaking and its graders are the moments where my ears were raised with interest and Mr. Washington, for better or worse, accurately siphons Levinson’s hang ups with the industry in a performance that is bombastic and grating in equal measure. Zendaya, as his sparring partner, becomes the mouthpiece for the viewer with her barbed interjections and corrections aimed squarely at Malcolm’s frivolous ego but even she too falls victim to Levinson’s need to get another snarky monologue off. Both are fated to ride the ups and (mostly aggravating) downs of the script but without their glimmers of deeper characterization — Washington’s quiet moments of inner reflection at his own foibles and Zendaya’s patented deadly mix of humor and barbed observation — the film might be worse off. When the film does take a look at the tortured love between Malcolm and Marie, there isn’t much interesting depths to find to their “love”; it all just boils down to a toxic couple slinging emotional blackmails at one another and then immediately (and toxically) reconciling. Indeed, the film may as well be marked with intertitles marked with “Argument” and “Reconciliation” as MALCOLM & MARIE quickly establishes a repetitive and noticeable pattern.
An interesting experiment to pull off in the midst of a world locked up(the film was created right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic), MALCOLM & MARIE fails to be much else. For all its flair and air of coolness, Mr. Levinson opens his doors to a film that is as eye-catching and blank as the house his two characters argue in.
1.5/5
