Movie Review: “Malcolm & Marie”

Sam Levinson’s intellectual depiction of a troubled romance offers the allure of stylish, energetic cinema, but disappoints at nearly every turn.

Malcolm & Marie is a movie in which two young, attractive people grace gorgeous frames of black-and-white film, deconstructing each other with sharp, well-read lines of dialogue inside a spacious Malibu bungalow. Its specialty is aesthetic and texture, flashing the appearance and trappings of a lovely film while simultaneously playing out as an exhaustive, overwrought two-hander that doesn’t offer much beyond an anatomy of a strained relationship.

Malcolm is a director; Marie is his partner and, in the case of his recently premiered debut feature, his creative muse. The film, never seen but incessantly discussed, is about a young woman grappling with addiction; Malcolm sees it as the work of an auteur, but it’s made very clear that the plot and main character are heavily inspired by Marie’s own story. The film takes place late at night, when the two characters return home from the premiere and unpack their relationship with the film, and then with themselves. This takes the form of an extensive, loud, on-and-off fight over who is the less perfect human being and who can investigate the other’s insecurities more meticulously…