l_rawjalaurence Set in contemporary Mumbai, TRISHNA is the tragic tale of a young woman (Freida Pinto) plucked from a village by a rich entrepreneur (Riz Ahmed) to live the high life, but finds herself very much at his beck and call with very little opportunity for self-determination. The story is an object lesson in how to understand the phrase "all that glisters is not gold," while pointing out the evils of capitalism in the newly-rich world of the Indian bourgeoisie.Michael Winterbottom's film has a fine sense of place, stressing the contrasts between the young woman Trishna's rural origins, her new life in Mumbai and her subsequent decampment to Rajasthan, where she is expected to work as a servant to Jay - the entrepreneur - while being a lover at the same time. The combination of roles proves too much for her, leading to a violent denouement. Jay is portrayed as a superficial character for whom money has far more importance than love; on many occasions the two concepts are deliberately conflated so that he can achieve his ends. Riz Ahmed turns in a fine performance, his facial expressions seldom changing as he returns to India from a prosperous life in London and expects the local people to act at his beck and call.Stylistically speaking, however, TRISHNA is rather irritating. Winterbottom's camera finds it difficult to focus on one particular object or person at a time; the shooting style is jerky, with several fast cuts between one thing and another. This serves a thematic purpose - to underline the superficialities of Jay's existence - but becomes rather difficult to watch. Consequently we find it difficult to sympathize with the protagonists - especially Trishna, even though she is very much the victim of a patriarchal society. Freida Pinto turns in a nuanced performance, but Winterbottom does not allow us to focus much on her facial expressions. The film might have worked better as a tragic love story if he had permitted us to understand her complex state of mind more fully.

Richard Wilkinson I have never seen a film attempt to create so much (unwarranted) endearment towards a character who is clearly disturbed and has a warped sense of reason and justice.Where is the character development? I don't see the point on this story at all, I'm not sure what the message is here. I'm not won over by the conflicts between class, rich and poor and Indian landscapes. That doesn't make a good movie, the story does. And to me the story is inconsistent, full of unanswered questions and quite frankly messed up. Terrible adaptation, I've not read the book but surely there is more to this story and the characters. Trishna needs a slap and a cup of coffee.

satya-jyothsna I understand that its an adaptation of a popular novel. But placing the happenings of the novel in India has done only more damage than good. 19th Century Britain is not modern India!! The way the movie depicts India is very pathetic - there is not an iota of logic in the movie when a girl from a protective, joint family all of 19 years old suddenly decides to run off with this English speaking fellow without having any demands.A village girl in India will have self-respect a million times more than an average girl from the city. And her family will be all too protective of the girl. Therefore it is unacceptable for this village belle to be unmarried at 19 and worse being sent away to unknown place for work. A village girl from India will not so naive!!! May be good adaptation of the book - but placing it in India is the biggest flaw in this movie. Do not watch if you know at least little about Indian villages and their culture.

Karl Ericsson Michael Winterbottom is famous for making his actresses undress and perform 'nekkid'. Not so in this movie and that is the spoiler although I rather see it as an 'unspoiler', since you will not spoil time seeing this film when I reveal this. The main actress is beautiful and comes away from this movie quite 'unspoiled', which means not 'nekkid'.The film is 210 minutes long and the action begins in the 90tieth minute and ends shortly afterwords. Before that there are pictures of India that at times are nice looking and there is a beautiful song when the end titles begin, which maybe is a little late for a movie to be beautiful.If you take a classy movie and remove the porn, then you may still have a classy movie but if you take a classy porn and remove the porn, what will you get then? There was a classy movie on the same subject as this film by Roman Polanski called 'Tess'. It was so classy that I do not even remember if there was any porn or nakedness in it. It was beautiful from the very start to the very end but I do not even remember if the music was beautiful or if there was any music in it at all.Here there is a lot of music and a lot of dancing - so much so, that you begin to wonder if Indians do nothing but dance. Certainly they seem to love dancing judging by the Bollywood movies that are full of it and unintentionally hilarious because of it. There's so much dancing in Bollywood movies that if you see just one of them you will not want to dance for the rest of your life! So this is Tess with Indian dancing and this is Winterbottom without the bottoms or buttocks. And there is the fast forward button and if you sit on it with your bottom while watching and your bottom is small enough not to interrupt the beam from the remote control you may maybe endure seeing this movie.