Review No.141: Trishna

I think you're always going to struggle with literary snobbishness if you try to update a classic text into a modern day setting for you film but it's been done a lot from Emma being turned into Clueless to recently From the Madding Crowd turned into Tamara Drewe. We have another Hardy adaptation next with prolific director Michael Winterbottom, who most recently directed the controversial The Killer Inside Me, adapting Tess of the D'Urbervilles and setting in modern-day India with Trishna. Freida Pinto plays the title character and Tess substitute who is a young girl growing up in a small village whose father works transporting various goods in his Jeep however when it gets into an accident Trishna is forced to take work elsewhere. Help comes in the form of Jay whose English family run a chain of hotels and he organises Trishna a job in one of these as the two slowly form a romantic bond however when it becomes too much for her she runs away. To make more money for her family she works for her uncle and aunt on their farm however eventually Jay tracks her down before convincing her to join him in Mumbai where he is now working as a financier of Bollywood movies. The next part of the story sees Trishna learn to be a Bollywood dancer and demonstrates the difference between the traditional India of her family and the modern-day India in the city where she and Jay eventually share a very swish apartment. However anyone who knows the text knows that the central female character can't stay happy for too long and when Jay's father suffers a stroke she travels back to the hotel with him only to find out that their relationship is very different there than it was in Mumbai.

Michael Winterbottom is an interesting director and you just have to look at his last two works, the aforementioned Killer Inside Me and the Steve Coogan/Rob Brydon sitcom The Trip, to know that he doesn't have once specific style. Trishna's comparisons to Tess are mainly in it's central character the poor innocent farm girl who is tempted by the promise of great things by the man in her life but ultimately things fall flat. The interesting thing with Trishna is that the two male protagonists of the Hardy text, Angel Clare and Alec D'Urberville, are combined into one here with Jay representing both the kindly saviour and the wicked rich boy in equal measure which is a bold move and is one that is likely to upset literary purists. What I enjoyed most of Trishna was that Winterbottom covered all aspects of India from the poor village life to the hotels which house the affluent westerners to the bustling streets of Mumbai and the sweaty pulsating sets of the Bollywood film industry. I real felt that Marcel Zyskind's cinematography transported you to each of these places and made you part of the action as best he could. I also thought that this was Freida Pinto's best performance since Slumdog Millionaire, though she wasn't give much to do in either Black Gold or Rise of the Planet of the Apes, here playing a delicate innocent flower who is overwhelmed by the various pleasures that Jay can offer but ultimately comes to the realisation that she can't trust everybody. Riz Ahmed tries his best with the multi-dimensional character of Jay easily conveying the charming man but struggling with playing the more despicable elements of the script in the latter third of the film. My main problem with Trishna was the episodic nature with some of the parts of her tale not being as interesting as others plus I didn't buy the transition of Jay's character so maybe it was  a mistake to combine Angel and Alec into one. Overall there is much to enjoy in Trishna however I didn't really get into it as much as I could've though this isn't the fault of the wonderful camera-work or Pinto's brilliant central performance. I think maybe my lack of enjoyment came from knowing what was coming next, having studied Tess at A-Level, so maybe Winterbottom should've messed around with the text a little more than just combining the two central male characters into one confusing amalgamation.

Verdict: Wonderful shots of India and an assured central performance from Pinto are spoilt by the film's somewhat confusing episodic nature so for that reason I will give Trishna 6/10