Trishna 2011:

     This film is a contemporary treatment of the novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles.  Trishna is a nineteen-year-old woman living in Rajasthan, India.  She meets Jay, the son of a rich British hotel owner.  Her large family is very poor; her father picks up fruits and vegetables for delivery.  He falls asleep at the wheel and runs into a bus.  Her family needs money after he is disabled and the Jeep is totaled.  Jay asks Trishna to work in a hotel owned by his father.  Since he is so handsome, charming and she doesn’t have a lot of choices, she accepts.  In the beginning, everything is going very well until Jay starts blurring the boundaries of their employer and employee relationship. 

     There was a lot of potential in this film but it relies too heavily on the tried and true formula of rich boy and poor girl.  Trishna and Jay become just paper cutouts instead of real people you can relate to.  More a story of beauty and the beast except the beast changes without explanation into a real beast.  3* (This movie is OK)

113 min, Drama directed by Michael Winterbottom with Freida Pinto, Riz Ahmed, Meeta Vashisht, Harish Khanna, Roshan Seth, Leela Madhauram.

Note:  Blockbuster 3*, imdb 5.6 out of 10, 67% critic 56% audience on Rotten Tomatoes.