Despite Compelling Stars, “Malcolm and Marie” Doesn’t Work

Now on Netflix

There’s little arguing about a two-star review for this dramatic showcase of two stars arguing, except maybe that’s too generous. Sam Lewinson’s pretentious meta two-hander Malcolm and Marie (D+) traces a contentious evening between a filmmaker fresh off a feted premiere (a confident and prickly John David Washington) and his somewhat spurned girlfriend/muse (a feisty and sometimes furious Zendaya). The two actors are basically the charged objects of a conversation story largely set during one fraught night in a modern mansion. For its entire running time, this stylish black and white film circles the drain, a trite tempest in a teacup with enough disparate theses to fill a semester of dissertations. None of it lands: not the panel on jealousy, not the discourse about film appreciation, not the seminar on appropriating loved ones into art. It’s a veritable fantasia of unpleasantness, blocked and mannered into a pulverized oblivion, blunting the skills and charms of the talented actors into becoming nearly unwatchable. The fact that Washington and Zendaya have select moments of authentic, acrobatic acting on display simply underscores that most of the film is an obtuse downer not worth the journey.

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