Trishna: Winterbottom of the barrel

Freida Pinto as Trishna
 

Based on the 19th-century novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Trishna tells the story of a poor man’s daughter who falls in love with the son of a property developer. Directed by Michael Winterbottom (who’s brought us everything from The Trip and 24 Hour Party People to A Mighty Heart) and starring Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire, Miral), the film centers on Trishna (Pinto), a 20-something year-old Indian girl who is forced to work a series of minion jobs in order to provide for her large family.

When one day she is approached by a handsome young millionaire, Jay (Riz Ahmed), Trishna is taken by surprise when he offers her a job at one of his hotels. Eventually the two are drawn together, and the sexual tension forces Trishna to go back to her father. Jay follows her trail and finds her, and soon the two take off to Bombay where they challenge social norms as an unmarried couple. The relationship takes a sharp turn for the worst when Jay finds out Trishna had an abortion before the move to Bombay. Gradually, their relationship is reduced to an exclusively sexual one, wherein Trishna becomes a sort of sex slave to Jay.

The film is a missed opportunity. Pinto’s only quality is her stunning beauty, and her acting in this film is reduced to two expressions: naive smiling and crying. The character of Trishna is poorly developed; she’s just as one-dimensional as a wallflower. She naively submits and agrees to anything that the men in her life tell her to do. One would think that she does no thinking for herself whatsoever.

There is no motivation in moving the story forward; it is only in the last half-hour of the film that the plot takes a sudden turn and even then, that sudden change in Jay’s behaviour is inexplicable. Notwithstanding the efforts of director Winterbottom to reinvent the gender struggle from Hardy’s novel, Trishna has no dramatic edge. ■

Trishna opens today, July 27.