Michael Winterbottom is a genre chameleon. It's frankly astonishing that the same director made "24 Hour Party People," "9 Songs," "A Mighty Heart," "The Killer Inside Me," and "The Trip" amongst others, all within the last ten years. Coming next from Winterbottom is "Trishna," an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel, "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," but transported to Rajasthan, India.
The film stars Freida Pinto as Trishna, who meets a wealthy young British businessman played by Riz Ahmed who has come to India to work in his father's hotel business, and tells the story of their tragic relationship. The new U.K. trailer for the film — which got a mixed reception when it premiered at TIFF — is now online and it, typically for Winterbottom, seems to make the most of its Indian location.
We're interested by anything Winterbottom makes (even his detractors would struggle to argue his films fail to provoke discussion) but we can't help but feel the success of this one may hang on Pinto's performance. We're confident Ahmed will be great after seeing him excel in "Four Lions" and in the under-seen "Shifty," but as Pinto seems to be largely carrying the picture, we'll see if she makes or breaks the film. "Trishna" arrives in limited release on May 18th, but will be in U.K. cinemas a couple of months earlier on March 9th. [Guardian]