Trishna

I am indebted to Sarya-Jayothsna who's review of Trishna certainly helped me to identify with the movie. Having only been to New Delhi and never experiencing rural India I had little idea at to what might be considered "normal" in such an environment.

I have always admired the sultry beauty of Indian women and Freida Pinto (as Trishna) added a much deeper aspect to my admiration. The total subservience that she displayed when working at her first job in the Jaipur hotel was delightful - every male was addressed so beautifully demurely as "Sir" with the typical Indian hand gesture of obeisance. The skill with which her manners were conducted was, far from being demeaning, an absolute pleasure to the extent it made me want to reciprocate (had I been there, of course). Far from placing Trishna into a position of being "used," I felt that it inspired a desire to treat her with the same respect that she gave to others. I guess, as a man, I would interpret that as making me want to love her - and that has nothing to do with sex - it made me want to cherish her and let her know just how much value she had as a person. So the way Jay (Riz Ahmed) simply used her as a pleasure toy incensed me. How could anyone be so insensitive not to realise how his treatment hurt?

As a simple, sincere village girl, Trishna had never loved anyone in an intimate way in her life and so, when a handsome young man shows an interest in her, it literally sweeps her off her feet and, sadly, there is no one to pick her up. She fell in love and he fell in lust! If ever a movie had evoked a strong desire to lovingly comfort the leading character, Trishna does that.

I suppose, because the story is an adaptation of an English classic, the ending was inevitable but I really wish it hadn't been. I was left feeling empty and useless. What a waste!

Trishna is a love story based on the Thomas Hardy novel Tess of the D'urbervilles. I haven't read it or seen the Polanski adaptation with Nastassia Kinski. Freida Pinto is the Tess character this time round, and she is breathtakingly beautiful; so casting is not the problem here. The story is so fractured, and the editing so poor, that I don't know what the filmmakers were going for.

It begins with a group of bored upper class Indians on a balcony discussing the best cities to party in. They get in a Jeep and drive recklessly around like a bunch of college frat boys. They visit an ancient temple where Jay; the leader of the pack, spots the stunning Trishna. He gets up to dance with her and later drops her off at the lower class families home.

The next day, Trishna is riding on the back of her father's truck to deliver produce when they crash into another vehicle and her dad is so badly injured that he cannot work. Jay comes to the rescue by offering Trishna a job at his father's big resort hotel. She works as a servant and he eventually has an encounter with her. The next morning she goes back home very quietly. Three months of vomiting and a visit to a doctor confirm a pregnancy which is terminated.

Jay reappears, and a few dance numbers are presented in between for no apparent reason. Trishna ends up at another of Jay's dad's hotels working once again as a servant. They also have a secret sexual relationship which grows cold and distant very quickly. At this point, I had lost interest in both Jay and Trishna. The camera loves Ms. Pinto, but she needs better material to work with.

Filmmakers never have been able to resist indulging their love for the good ol' English canon by churning out their own rendering of classic novels. Last year was no exception, with the likes of Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre and Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights hitting our screens. But while these were both pretty decent efforts, overall they provided little more than an opportunity for the well-versed viewer to compare them to previous outings and mull over their treatment of the source material.

As such, the classic novel adaptation has become little more than a type of genre flick, in which we are invited to watch a director wrestle with a well-worn story. Transposing Thomas Hardy's tragic novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles from Victorian Wessex to modern day India, as Michael Winterbottom has done with Trishna, appears on the surface to be little more than another gimmicky relocation of a classic tale. This film, however, manages to do justice to Hardy's themes whilst carving out a discernibly different kind of work that can be watched and enjoyed with fresh eyes.

Hardy was writing in a period of dramatic ideological and economic transition. Victorian censoriousness was still grappling with post-Reformation libertinism while the Industrial Revolution was encroaching upon and modernising the rural world. Tess is a heroine caught in the crossfire of warring moralities. Winterbottom deftly reinterprets the character as Trishna (Freda Pinto), a teenager from a poor family, who is torn between the traditional values of her homeland in rural Rajasthan and the social and sexual liberation she later finds in Mumbai.

Winterbottom has stated that he chose India because it currently bears similar ideological divides to those of nineteenth century Britain, but he in fact paints a more complex and modern picture. Far from being the 'pure woman' of Hardy's novel, whose downfall took place in spite of her moral rectitude, Trishna is a conflicted character who is grounded in the old world but drawn to the bright lights of the new.

In place of the pious Angel Clare, who Tess falls in love with, and the rakish Alec d'Urberville, who robs her of her virtue, we are given Jay Singh (Riz Ahmed), a conflation of both characters. A British-born rich kid, he comes to Rajasthan to work for his father's chain of hotels and takes a shine to Trishna. The two begin to fall in love, but he unwittingly leads her to disgrace herself by succumbing to his advances. Growing tired of hiding their relationship, he suggests they leave for Mumbai, where they can live together, free from scorn.

Although perhaps a little insensitive, Jay is every bit the honest and loving Angel Clare of the narrative, until a return to Rajasthan leads his darker, d'Urbevillian side to show itself. Managing one of his father's hotels, a former harem, he revels in subordinating Trishna to his depraved appetites, until she is forced to take revenge.

Unlike Hardy's novel of black-and-white morality embodied by wholesome heroines and seedy villains, these modernised characters have internalised these conflicts. Winterbottom's adaptation insists upon its modern setting, and refuses to impose Hardy's hundred-year-old dynamic onto it. Trishna's downfall isn't a journey from honour to disgrace, but a process by which she is isolated between two different notions of piety, and taken advantage of by her malevolent lover. Not only does this prevent Winterbottom from casting aspersions on traditional or indeed modern values, it also makes for a far more convincing appropriation of the novel.

Although Winterbottom is given a writing credit, the script was apparently little more than a set of vague outlines from which the actors were expected to improvise the dialogue. Luckily, the leads are more than up to the task, and their off-the-cuff performances lend well to portraying a tentative courtship between two different cultures. The early scenes in which Jay has to overcome the language barrier to get Trishna's attention are a naturalistic joy, yet even as things take a more dramatic turn, Pinto and particularly Ahmed remain startlingly believable.

Their improvised riffs help to cast the characters into entirely different moulds, while the embrace of the Indian aesthetic allows the setting to stake new ground within the story as well. Whether Winterbottom is diving head first into the throng of the city or nestling the camera in the rugged hills of the countryside, his loose and intuitive style takes each locale as it is, capturing it with intelligence and warmth. The soundtrack, featuring a selection of original Bollywood numbers, bounces off the visuals wonderfully, whilst the incorporation of an on-screen translation of the Hindi lyrics proves a novel and expressive addition. Rather than treating India as a mere stand-in for old-world England, Winterbottom attends to it dutifully, helping to create the film's distinctive flavour.

Whether you've read Tess or not, love a good adaptation or usually find them cosy, generic tripe, there's plenty to enjoy with Trishna. Instead of just guising an old story in contemporary garb, Winterbottom truly reinterprets it and in doing so finds resonance with a modern audience. Most impressively, it is an adaptation that stands firmly on its own two feet, and graces us with some inimitable and elegant performances.

To claim that TRISHNA is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' is really stretching the imagination. This is an engrossing film about caste differences in India: the screenwriters are not mentioned - only the fact that director Michael Winterbottom based his story on Hardy's famous novel seems to be more of a PR draw than reality. But the film is well acted and the aromas and atmospheres of India are well captured.

TRISHNA reveals the life of one woman whose life is destroyed by a combination of love and circumstances. Set in contemporary Rajasthan, Trishna (Freida Pinto, beautiful and sensitive) meets a wealthy young British businessman Jay Singh (Riz Ahmed, inordinately handsome and polished) who has come to India to work in his father's hotel business. After an accident destroys her father's Jeep, Trishna goes to work for Jay, and they fall in love. But despite their feelings for each other, they cannot escape the conflicting pressures of a rural society which is changing rapidly through industrialization, urbanization and, above all, education. Trishna's tragedy is that she is torn between the traditions of her family life and the dreams and ambitions that her education has given her: the sexual double standard to which Tess falls victim despite being a truly good woman makes her despised by society after losing her virginity before marriage. Trishna has choices after she receives an education, but she instead chooses to follow her passion for Jay. Jay truly loves Trishna but his social class demands that he keep Trishna as an employee, making his physical love affair with her a private matter due to the rules of the caste system. Jay does not seem to be a villain here and Trishna is not a victim: these two facts make the ending a bit over the top and unnecessary. A more intelligent script could have made this a first class film.

Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed are fascinating to observe as they work through the confines of love in a world that does not condone their union. The other characters in the cast are excellent - especially Roshan Seth as Jay's father. In setting the story in contemporary India the director seems to have decided it was important to include cellphones and Bollywood dancing rehearsals and filmmaking to provide spice. But in the end it is the fine acting by Pinto and Ahmed that make this film work.

Grady Harp

Take a classic Thomas Hardy novel and replace the setting (Victorian England) by modern India, a society that still has some of the characteristics needed to make this story believable. That's what Michael Winterbottom has done and it works wonderfully well.

Where else than in India can a poor, submissive girl who has never learned to speak up for herself, have a relationship with a rich guy who is used to getting everything he wants? Of course, the love affair is doomed because of the strict social rules that are still prevalent in India. We know from the beginning there will be tragic developments because this is a remake of Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

Winterbottom shows us very clear that the two would-be lovers have nothing in common. For him, she is purely an object of desire, a pretty face he can show off to his friends in Mumbai and have fun with between the sheets. For her, he is an escape route from poverty, an entrance ticket to the world of the jet set and possibly to a career in Bollywood.

Freida Pinto, of Slumdog Millionaire fame, is quite believable as the working class girl who is only used to obeying orders. For her, there is not much difference between saying yes to her father who asks her to fetch a glass of water, and saying yes to her lover when he asks her to move to Mumbai with him and become his live-in girlfriend. There is not much spirit in her role, and that makes you wonder if her passivity is the result of her acting talent, or, on the contrary, if it shows her lack of talent. Anyway, she plays the role exactly the way it should be.

The film doesn't paint a pretty picture of India. It's all there: the rural poverty, the girls who can't go to school because there is no money, the horrible traffic accidents, the inequality between the rich and the poor.

The only thing I didn't like about this film are the many scenes of successive nice-looking images, underscored by romantic music. In many of these scenes Pinto is featured very prominently, which is understandable because she is extremely beautiful. But it gets tedious after a while. I also lost count of the number of scenes where we see her carrying a tray to customers of the hotel she works in. These scenes make the story unnecessary slow and unbalanced.