Trishna

The woman always gets it ...
I agree with another reviewer who points out that this film is only remotely inspired by Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Even so, it highlights the continuing inequalities between class and gender.

Riz Ahmed (of Four Lions) is impressive as the sweet yet entitled Jay. His besotted lover changes believably when he finds out that Trishna had an abortion after their first encounter. That he is also called back to London to be with his ailing father contributes to the emotional distance between himself and Trishna. When he returns to India and, reluctantly, to his father's hotel business, he and Trishna are socially separated: he to the high class position of hotel proprietor and she to being a servant. This additional separation, in addition to the emotional separation and his father's illness and death, turns Jay into a brutal and dominating sexual predator.

Freida Pinto, as Trishna, has been criticized for not having enough of an emotional palette in this movie...

I want to see it again
Gritty, gripping, and disturbing. With captivating slices of Indian life, rural and urban. However, the story seems a bit farfetched at times. And the main characters were written a little too thin and plot lines too pat in spots. That notwithstanding, there are moments of subtle, piercing drama and social comment as well.

Accidental enjoyment
Trishna is one of the those films that you accidentally bump into and put in on your playlist and every time you want to watch it there is a suspicion because you don't know how the experience is going to be. However when you do finish watching this film you are pleasantly surprised.......
Loosely based on the Thomas Hardy novel, Tess of the D'Urbervilles" , Winterbottom changes the location from Wales England to Rajasthan India however fundamentally the scenarios also change, it readers remember the original story was based in rural Wessex while the present day movie adaptation changes to a rural Rajasthan which is furiously changing with the advancing forces of globalization.
Basically this is a film about a romance that one senses will end in doom but still offers some hope at times. Riaz Ahmed is the son of Roshan Seth, a rich hotelier who owns a number of hotels. He comes to Rajasthan to help manage one of the properties and ends with getting besotted by a low ranking...

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