Michael Winterbottom's "Trishna" is the fourth theatrical adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles." The first two adaptations, silent films released in 1913 and 1924 respectively, have since been declared lost. The next adaptation, however, was well preserved even before its American premiere in 1980. This would be Roman Polanski's "Tess," a romantic melodrama that, like the novel, was set in Victorian England. "Trishna," a modernized retelling that shifts the setting to India, is very much like "Tess" in that it tells the story of an innocent young woman whose life is ultimately destroyed by love, societal values, unfortunate turns of events, and above all, male dominance. It's tragic, but not unnecessarily so; we understand the gravity of the situation, and we recognize that the conclusion is inescapable.

Trishna (Freida Pinto) lives a meager existence with her large family in a village in Rajasthan. The eldest daughter, she helps pay the bills by working at a nearby resort as a greeter and cocktail server. It's during one of her night shifts that she meets a British businessman named Jay (Riz Ahmed),the son of an ailing but wealthy property developer (Roshan Seth). Jay has come to India at his father's request to manage a luxury resort in Jaipur. His initial meeting with Trishna was essentially only a casual encounter; it isn't until her father destroys his Jeep and hurts himself in an accident that their relationship becomes much more serious. That's when Jay offers Trishna the chance to work at his hotel for a relatively sizeable sum, enough to provide for her family. During her time as his employee, they fall in love, and in due time, they have sex.

In Polanski's film, Tess is raped and soon thereafter gives birth to a sickly baby that immediately dies. In Winterbottom's film, Trishna's inevitable pregnancy is terminated under duress from her father, who is, to put it mildly, old fashioned. In both films, the title characters have been saddled with the same secret, one that could forever ruin a potentially happy life with the men they love. Jay, a combination of the Alec Stokes-d'Urberville and Angel Clare characters from "Tess," is initially not made aware of Trishna's pregnancy or the resulting abortion, allowing for scenes that give Trishna hope for a better life. She and Jay eventually move to Mumbai, where both dabble in the Bollywood scene, Trishna in front of the camera and Jay behind. The cracks eventually begin to show on their seemingly solid relationship, most interestingly when they tour their new apartment and Jay shows Trishna the kitchen.

Although Jay seems to be in love with Trishna, he will in due time make the most astounding of transformations, namely from a charming young man into a controlling monster. Ideally, Trishna would have been able to approach him with news of her pregnancy. Realistically, she's part of a culture where having a child out of wedlock is considered disgraceful, not just for the woman but for her family as well. This is despite the fact that there have been advancements in economic growth, mobility, and education, both in urban and rural areas. With this in mind, exactly how could Trishna confess to Jay? You'd think he'd be more progressive, considering his British upbringing, but the truth is that he's essentially a spoiled brat who flaunts his status as a fiancée would her ring.

The other side of the issue is Trishna's father, a man so traditional that not even the good money she earns can persuade him to look past her sin – which, incidentally, may not have been a sin at all but rather an act that was forced upon her. So now it comes down to an issue we tend to dance around, especially in circumstances like this: Was it consensual, or was it rape? It may not be as clear cut as it seems; Jay's initial act of kindness, coupled with his handsome looks and alluring demeanor, effectively reduced the naïve and impressionable Trishna into a state of total submission, which is to say that she probably would have jumped off a cliff if he asked her to do so. It was more mental than physical, I believe. He took advantage of a situation by seducing her. Regardless, her resulting pregnancy made her damaged goods in the eyes of her father.

This, combined with Jay's drastic personality shift, paves the way for a deeply unpleasant yet highly appropriate ending. Unlike "Tess," in which the possibility of a happy turnaround carried through to the final shot, "Trishna" makes it abundantly clear that no such possibility exists. The title character is nothing more or less than a hapless victim of circumstance. If my description of this movie has made it sound like an overwrought soap opera, you should know that I don't believe the plot was intended to be the main focus. It's really more about character development, specifically in relation to culture, and theme. We see that Trishna is in distress, and we feel her pain, and within the context of the story, we understand the reasons behind every decision she makes.

-- Chris Pandolfi (www.atatheaternearyou.net)

To claim that TRISHNA is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' is really stretching the imagination. This is an engrossing film about caste differences in India: the screenwriters are not mentioned - only the fact that director Michael Winterbottom based his story on Hardy's famous novel seems to be more of a PR draw than reality. But the film is well acted and the aromas and atmospheres of India are well captured.

TRISHNA reveals the life of one woman whose life is destroyed by a combination of love and circumstances. Set in contemporary Rajasthan, Trishna (Freida Pinto, beautiful and sensitive) meets a wealthy young British businessman Jay Singh (Riz Ahmed, inordinately handsome and polished) who has come to India to work in his father's hotel business. After an accident destroys her father's Jeep, Trishna goes to work for Jay, and they fall in love. But despite their feelings for each other, they cannot escape the conflicting pressures of a rural society which is changing rapidly through industrialization, urbanization and, above all, education. Trishna's tragedy is that she is torn between the traditions of her family life and the dreams and ambitions that her education has given her: the sexual double standard to which Tess falls victim despite being a truly good woman makes her despised by society after losing her virginity before marriage. Trishna has choices after she receives an education, but she instead chooses to follow her passion for Jay. Jay truly loves Trishna but his social class demands that he keep Trishna as an employee, making his physical love affair with her a private matter due to the rules of the caste system. Jay does not seem to be a villain here and Trishna is not a victim: these two facts make the ending a bit over the top and unnecessary. A more intelligent script could have made this a first class film.

Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed are fascinating to observe as they work through the confines of love in a world that does not condone their union. The other characters in the cast are excellent - especially Roshan Seth as Jay's father. In setting the story in contemporary India the director seems to have decided it was important to include cellphones and Bollywood dancing rehearsals and filmmaking to provide spice. But in the end it is the fine acting by Pinto and Ahmed that make this film work.

Grady Harp

I always admired the way director Michael Winterbottom brought to life the living, breathing 'feel' of the story he was telling in "In This World", a 2002 drama about a plight from one end of Europe to the other; filling the frame with a sudden cut to a television broadcast and somehow managing to maintain a real air of the other-worldly with slow-burning electronic music and moving compositions. He brings a similar aesthetic to "Trishna", instilling it with dream-like music and seemingly needless cutaways to shots of bustling cities, vistas and the nature of the sub-continent.

Stripped bare, the film is not really depicting anything especially original - it is a love story and a tragedy; a two-hander conveying a brooding infatuation and how somebody else copes with it. A lesser film might have just depicted one side of the story, tossed in a finale probably involving a chase and a 'fatal blow', and would almost certainly have done it all in a fashion less ambitious than what Winterbottom does here.

We begin in the winter of a holiday three Britain-based lads are having in India with a fourth chap called Jay (Riz Ahmed) who, while certainly has a physical connection to the UK, is now living in India and is racially Indian. The four of them have been enjoying themselves, chiefly using the experience to try and pull a lot of women - their introduction sees them hare past the camera in a 4x4 which is blaring out rock music with a misogynist undertone as a camel, perhaps designed to epitomise a more traditional form of transportation, limps along in the background in the other direction.

Once the holiday ends and the three head back to Britain, Jay remains and carries on working at his affluent father's hotel in Jaipur, where he has goaded the young eponymous Trishna (Freida Pinto) into working there two having met her at a different hotel during the holiday. The film will come to revolve around both of these characters in equal measure, but Winterbottom keeps his cards mightily close to his chest throughout; where Jay dominates the opening act, and we are invited to see the piece as a project about someone perhaps learning to loosen attitudes and embrace monogamy, Trishna is probably provided with a meatier personality: her father is injured and the move to the big city, away from her humble rural home, will earn the big-money to pay for that. The character arc of shifting somebody away from this kind of locality and to the other one is, again, something more synonymous with protagonists and more typical with mythic story-telling.

And yet, she is remarkably passive for a protagonist - her role in the film as a waitress helpfully, perhaps even deliberately, reinforces this; Jay makes all the conversation, calls most of the shots as it is he who is most familiar with the Jaipur surroundings. The film initiates a kind of love story, toying with us and placing us into a false domain whereby Trishna appears to change her mind having initially rejected Jay's initial advances upon being rescued from a probable mugging. We are provided with scenes such as the one whereby one teaches the other how to whistle, which in a lesser film might have had us crossing our arms and exhaling in its awkward simplicity.

But the film is not as one-dimensional as that. It seems to lose faith in Jay as a lead in the second act, shifting focus over to Pinto's character, who gradually puts all the pieces together just as the audience is invited to: Jay is so very spoiled by his father, and has a history of getting everything he wants anyway; we learn that he has slept with a number of other female employees at the hotel, but is this friendship with Trishna any different, and is his desire to drop his liberal attitudes for something potentially resembling monogamy genuine? Certainly, the way Jay's own father places his hands on the face of Trishna early in their meeting may just be an eccentric, friendly way of making first-contact, or is it something seamier in the wider context of life at this place?

I only learnt through research after the fact that the film is based on a novel by Thomas Hardy entitled 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' and that another male character has been removed entirely for this filmic adaptation. As a consequence, Winterbottom is working within confines even tighter than I first realised and grumblings on how Jay seems to slide from being one person into another a little too easily might seem misplaced given Ahmed has been granted the unenviable task of essentially depicting both people. Problems with this or anything else aside, "Trishna" is a meaty two-handed tale of love; loss and tragedy.