Mark Reviews Movies: MR. MALCOLM'S LIST

Mr. Malcolm's List, Bleecker Street

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 30, 2022

There are moments of real delight in Mr. Malcolm's List, director Emma Holly Jones' adaptation of Suzanne Allain's same-titled novel. Most of them come from the bickering and bantering between these characters, who are looking for marriage—and, ideally, romance—against the backdrop of early 1800s England. Others come from the promise of ingenuity in the plot, which revolves around a doubly cruel revenge scheme, and the way Jones, making her feature debut (after a few shorts that include a brief adaptation of this material), maintains a lighter-than-air tone that evades any sense of malice.

The surprises among those moments, though, are the ones in which we can sense Allain's story, which she herself has adapted for the screen, overcoming its obvious roots as a pastiche of a few other familiar tales and character archetypes. There's little denying, as the most apparent example, that Allain has taken more than a bit of inspiration from the works of Jane Austen, who famously—and with considerable longevity, given the contemporary specificity in the author's stories—wrote of similar courtship concerns during the same period as this film's setting.

Pride and Prejudice, of course, serves as a primary source of that inspiration, if only because the eponymous character, an outwardly stern but secretly kind man of exacting manner and particular tastes, so matter-of-factly reflects Mr. Darcy, the most enduring of men from Austen's oeuvre. If that's the case, one of our main women here must also be akin to that novel's Elizabeth Bennet. Maybe, though, there's a bit of her in both of the women whose fates are dependent upon the plot, the whims and prejudices of others, and the navigation of the "marriage market" scene.

Our schemer might also be in the vein and a subversion of the title character from Austen's Emma, as she's a matchmaker here—albeit with mean-spirited intentions. The scheme itself, which has our anti-heroine training a socially unlikely match for the prideful man as a means of getting revenge on him, could be seen as an amalgamation of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons.

There are surely more references to and hints of other well-known material in this story, but at what point does a pastiche of so much previous material become an entity unto itself? The most significant delight of this film is in watching the filmmakers discover and uncover the unique identities of this story and these characters.

The central figures are long-time friends Selina (Freida Pinto), the daughter of a country vicar, and Julia (Zawe Ashton), a child of some wealth from London. The two met as children near the start of the 19th century at a boarding school, and their bond has endured for 15 years through letters. Julia attends an opera with Mr. Malcolm (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù), whose familial status and wealth make him London's most eligible bachelor. She does not impress him with her fluttering eyelashes or her mistaken belief that the Corn Laws are a government diet initiative.

After Julia's failed wooing of Malcolm becomes the subject of a caricature, she vows revenge and enlists the aid of her cousin Lord Cassidy (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who has learned of his friend Malcolm's list of qualities he desires in a wife. Julia invites Selina to visit London with the intention of teaching her friend to match those requirements, make Malcolm fall in love with her, and then spurn him for not meeting Selina's own list of conditions for a husband.

The proceeding developments and complications likely won't surprise. Selina does find Malcolm quite attractive, intelligent, charming, and far more kind-hearted than Julia has led her to believe, and of course, Selina does not need Julia and Cassidy's training to be the picky bachelor's perfect match.

Their legitimate courtship is presented with such wit, playfulness, and sincerity—thanks in significant part to chemistry between Pinto and Dìrísù—that it's almost too easy to forget that the whole affair only happens on account of an act of subterfuge. The trick of Allain's script and Jones' direction is to make the distinction between the real romance happening here (Julia and Malcolm's first and quite touching meeting is entirely by chance, despite Julia's planning) and the revenge plot (Malcolm checks off Selina's qualities as a possible bride, just to remind us of the underlying gimmick).

There is a secondary story along the sides of that courtship, and it belongs to Julia, whose conniving ways and genuinely wounded heart—along with her pride, naturally—make for a pointed, slightly cynical counterbalance to the earnestness of the central romance. Indeed, Julia, played with considerable dexterity by Ashton, slowly transforms from the petty driver of this plot into a fascinating character in her own right.

She is equally comic in her ignorance, devious in her motives, and somewhat tragic in how societal pressures have swayed her sense of self-worth. The underlying story here may be one of cunning manipulation, but even as Allain adds obstacles to both plots (the romance and the scheme) and brings everyone toward some form of comeuppance (no matter how brief, since this is a romantic comedy), there's a real generosity to this screenplay. It makes room and takes time to understand and sympathize with these characters on a level that shows they're more than mere archetypes. That even means providing Julia with a potential suitor in Captain Henry Ossory (Theo James)—if only she can get past her own insecurities, pride, and prejudices.

At first, Mr. Malcolm's List may seem like a fun game of noticing the story's unofficial citations to and subversions of recognizable material. As those elements develop, though, it becomes increasingly clear that Allain and Jones have used those inspirations to craft something with its own personality and a specific sense of the personalities within it.

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