Love and Hate in Black and White: MALCOLM & MARIE

by Le Anne Lindsay, Editor

MALCOLM AND MARIE has a good premise and a sublime set; who’s house is that? There’s a surprising amount of movement achieved considering it takes place in a single location. I know the film was written this way to get around COVID19 and budget restrictions, but it feels more like a creative decision. Also, I liked the black and white nod to “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”.

The problem being, writer/director Sam Levinson over wrote the dialogue. So many times there would be great points made or arrows slung by either Malcolm (John David Washington) or Marie (Zendaya) and you’d just want them to land and end scene, but it never happened. Instead each time one or the other’s soliloquy would go on too long. Way too much would be said, which would muddy the brilliance of what had first been expressed and turn the scene into a bad play.

I also feel like because it’s over-written, it’s hard to judge the performances. But I do like Zendaya’s body language and it was good to finally see JDW create a character, even if that character is a prick through most of the film. In “Blackkklansman” he just said lines, that’s how Adam Driver stole the movie from him. In “Tenet” there’s too much nonsense to keep track of for a new actor to really make that role something other than an action figure. But here he got to be a person.

The beats of “Malcolm & Marie” are off as well, too many makeups between the couple only to get right back into it not 2 minutes later. In life, sometimes arguments can have peaks and valleys, but in this case it felt contrived. The cadence would have been better served with ratcheting up the tension little by little with reveals until a massive blow up! And then deescalation with sex; yet the audience should feel as though the couple has really said too much to come back from.

T&T @LAMB rating: 2.5 outta 5