Misery is a diamond: it beautifies with recurring pressure. Therefore the looping melancholic distress in "Malcolm & Marie." With the COVID-19 pandemic ongoing, this hyperbolized Netflix streamer is written, directed, and filmed in quarantine by "Euphoria" inventor Sam Levinson (co-producer alongside John David Washington, Zendaya, Ashley Levinson, and Kevin Turen) and is contextually just as a chamber drama, bottling the monochromatic schizophrenia of the lovers's quelling and quarreling within an ironically spacious mansion, yet the interior is very enclosed for them to dilly-dally in their own dimensions. Couple Malcolm (Washington), a filmmaker, and Marie (Zendaya), mayhap a recovering drug patient, arrives at their secluded hillside villa from the former's movie premier. Marie is easily annoyed as her boyfriend orates about the busyness of show business which kilns the first of many circuiting arguments. She senses neglect from Malcolm's failure of mentioning her in his speech as he basks in the success of his creative project which Marie is seemingly the subject of. They debate and re-debate which stretches overnight, the 107-minute tenure of "Malcom & Marie."
Bickering afresh every quarter-clock or so may be a symptom of short-term amnesia, inherited by the only two characters from Levinson's bewitched screenplay. The writer-director's leads might have been cursed into an inescapable spire of arguing over an identical topic — Malcolm's obsession on his Hollywood work and Marie's misery due to inadequate appreciation from her man. She is unstable, grappling with depression, implied to have struggled with drug abuse while Malcolm is conflicted with a nudge of perfectionism and a throe from criticism. Levinson, through a tracking shot plopped outward the glass veneer of the exuberant bungalow, tails Washington as he expatiates the complexity of white critics critiquing black filmmakers and casts. He paces ovally, the couches his epicenter, from the kitchen to the living room as the camera protracts on him — centripetal on Malcolm's agitation and ferment of towards his career. In the two seconds that he tangos from the cookery to the common area is documentary of the compacted grange, and he still have adequate latitude to trudge and repeatedly complain about his beautified misery.
Romantically quiet, the scenery of "Malcolm & Marie" is edited into the crickety sound, the humming of the car, the thumping of refrigerator lid, and the clicking of door latches are tranquil-shattering alarms — basic volume manipulation to trigger consciousness in silent moviemaking. The story, like the string on a fishing rod, reels forward through the tell-tale dialogue: Marie analyzes the thought-to-tongue process of Malcolm. "What a cunt. Mmm. This macaroni and cheese is delicious." This is not how humans normally converse, but the screenplay is stunningly absorbent, it is terrifying to ruminate what if this is how persons actually talk? It would be nicer to be mum and fork a mouthful of mac and cheese than bear the punishingly cheesy tattle of Levinson's clawing script. To act misery in the pother of neglect, Zendaya is consciously aloof, bored and fading as the cloudspur of her cigarette, nonchalantly heaving and wisping. She is aware, even more so than Malcolm, supplying him with professional and personal components — his liking for her cooking for him or that he rarely receives satisfactory reviews about his movies — that either affirms or decries his biodata.
The insignia of Malcolm's egotistical exaggeration, Washington is. He is typical when about work. Aside from that, he seems detached from personal musings. Marie, as if syrupy cheese on buttered macaroni, is insufferably spread and clinging in the personal that her advertence for interpersonal is confined to inner personal. When she lambasts him with vocal hellfire, top lighting is shone upon Washington's visage. In beautified black and white, the spangle bows directly atop his eyes, positioning a shadowy glare to implicate his doubt and agita in the crestfallen tug-of-war with his aggrieved sweetheart. The monochromatic cinematography, by Marcell Rév, dapples the gloomy vibrations of "Malcolm & Marie." Rév inserts the frames in an arciform slot where the subjects are adequately showered with the greyscale lighting as the chrome pigmentation is made more lucent and meteoric in its neutrality. Devoid of dye, the theatrical photography is the actuality of a simmering relationship in dusty ferrotype.
Washington's intensity climbs mercurially as high as his clearheadedness could cinch. That restraint he loads in his flagging, air-fencing the grass by the house, boxing with the draft, spewing lines as short as "I know what this is. This is bullshit;" and "People," while munching mac and cheese as his shrugs and eye-rolls, punches and throws render him seismic: the imagery is immovable but Washington's minimal ticks unlatch stalemate-erasing voltage. Or when Malcolm is a-lean on the wall, being verbally lashed by Marie for his alleged creative incompetency, Washington on the verge of sobbing but pulsates to level the teardrops threatening to trickle into the waterfall of his weakness — a stratum of bridle that monopolizes his varying acts. There's a capture where Zendaya is splayed in the bathtub sniveling, buoying herself in the flooding toxicity and persuasion of fidelity. She has exaggerated witchery that pulls absorption and pushes prescription — being a lunatic fringe, flashing a knife across the carpet to Malcolm, punctuating her pretend-or-valid craziness with, "...and that Malcolm is what authenticity buys you." With these scripted precariousness stringing Malcolm and Marie, it's demonstrable that they are acting. None is unprocessed, but the unnatural-ness beautifies their recurrent misery into showmanship.
Upon reading the review on his film by the “white woman from the L.A. Times,” Malcolm liberates and berates with a barrage of sweltering opinions about the film industry. He is a grenade unpinned, blasting critics, filmmakers, and audiences. Racy Marie, in plain tank top and undies, lies on the sofa, amused by the kvetching of her beau as if bird-watching baby rockets launching and cracking simultaneously at the veranda. Zendaya's smirks are devilish because, hell, Marie loves this temper-brat of a brute as much as she is a wildcard. If "Malcolm & Marie" is the portrait of delusion, then it is torturously beauteous. Instability is its deck, for overabundance of rational romancing will snap the hairlike conceit of a couple that is otherwise flawless. As Malcolm searches for Marie outside their mini mansion, he insets in the glass crests on the headway of their bedroom. Where they are supposed to be nestling, they are absconding from each other within the lacuna of their daedal enclosure. Inside the three panels, Malcolm excavates jalousie by jalousie; the components of the sum that is their bed, station of their conjugality. Instead, he is parted by the glass, hunting for the person that makes everything whole for him. "Malcolm & Marie," — as is with any struggling "fucking mental patient," scoffs Malcolm — is the inverse: exaggeratedly segmented, miserably intact.
Director: Sam Levinson
Images and trailer ©️ Netflix; YouTube.com
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