Review of Malcolm & Marie (2021) by Normatamale — 24 Feb 2021

Having heard of the mixed reception this received I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly and effectively I was drawn into the complexity of these characters and their relationship. The opening dialogue felt somewhat stilted and that kinda got me off on the wrong foot, expecting a much more pseudo-intellectual, *pretentious* screenplay. But then it gets going, Coleman and Washington get going and we start to get to know Malcolm and Marie, what their deal is, what they're about, why they're so dysfunctional. And the intriguing thing about the film to me is that even through the cycles of the characters eviscerating eachother and laying the other bare, you never really find out what is true. Is it Marie or Malcolm who is more justified in their grievances? There are moments when they're probably exactly right about eachother, moments when the winning argument of one implies the loss of the other's, and a lot of moments when you just don't know. That's a very compelling tension to watch play out, because so often when we're in a relationship, our own perspective on that relationship and the other person can't be the only right one. Two perspectives can be true at once, or entirely wrong, and reckoning with that is important to making a relationship work.

I wasn't turned off by the fighting, because most of the time (though not always) the dialogue brought something new, a different insight into Malcolm's passion, his privilege, his ego, or Marie's intelligence, her depth, her ways of coping with trauma.

There were moments when even Coleman and Washington, vibrant and endlessly charismatic as they are, weren't able to ground the verbose and lyrical dialogue enough to make me believe it could be spoken by real people, and that felt incongruent with most of the rest of the film. But these two will stay with me, and I'll go in for a rewatch before too long. Recommend if you are interested in complex characters, examining a dysfunctional relationship and can handle *maybe* hearing a word or two you haven't heard before.

Also, that scene with the knife. Without spoiling anything: DAMN, Marie.