Malcom & Marie: the monologues movie

Valentina Premoli
StudioWhakan
Published in
3 min readMar 20, 2021

Plot:

A director and his girlfriend’s relationship is tested after they return home from his movie premiere and await critics’ responses.

Cast:

Thoughts:

Sam Levinson, forced to suspend filming of the second season of Euphoria due to the pandemic, took advantage of the forced hiatus to write the screenplay for Malcolm & Marie; and involved its protagonist Zendaya in the project, flanked by John David Washington.

Malcolm and Marie are a couple, he is a director, she is a former actress. They return home after the premiere of his first film, which has been a huge success. He is overexcited and adrenaline, she cold and grumpy, as they talk you understand why she is so frustrated and angry, he forgot to thank her both as his partner and as a source of inspiration at the speech, the film was about a drug addict in rehab and she experienced the same thing.

The film is all shot in their house which acts as a stage, during the night they deal with various themes but never deepen them, some only name them and pass on to the next and more a retort of ideas but in the end they are not concrete. Marie is the usual support character for the cliché, troubled girlfriend that Malcolm has saved and does anything for him; Malcolm is largely a self-centered asshole, the kind of guy who makes everything about him.

The difference between Malcolm and Marie is very noticeable right away from the way they are dressed, she is always portrayed little dressed he instead always dressed, throughout the film while she changes, he only takes off his jacket, so much so that for a certain point of the film to emphasize that it is not as it seems to say a phrase “if this were a movie you would be portrayed as sexualized but who knows how you like to dress on Friday nights”, a joke put there just for that.

At the end of the film there isn’t a twist or a change in their relationship, they remain static.

Stream it now on Netflix

If you have seen it and want to say your opinion, slip it into the comments or under the dedicated post on the instagram page @studiowhakan

Thank you for reading.

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