It's impossible to predict filmmaker Michael Winterbottom's next move, other than to assume it will be nothing like his last. The English director went from the graphic music-driven romance 9 Songs to the cheeky esoteric comedy Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story to the harrowing documentary The Road to Guantanamo. More recently, he made the controversial and sickeningly violent The Killer Inside Me, then followed it up with the jaunty buddy comedy/travel doc The Trip, now with Trishna he has translated Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which was set in 1870s England, into a sensual drama set in contemporary India.
Freida Pinto stars as the title character, the lowly daughter of an auto rickshaw owner who enters into a doomed romance with the son of a wealth real estate developer. Riz Ahmed of Four Lions co-stars as her lover. While the first trailer reveled in the scope of the film, relished in the glorious setting and boasted it's festival cred, the newly released clip centers on the pair's flirtation. Check it out below or in full-res at Apple:
After Slumdog Millionaire, Pinto was the hot ingénue of the moment, but lackluster turns in Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and Rise of the Planet of the Apes have sullied her star. Still, the buzz is Trishna reveals a new side to this gorgeous starlet, and so could prove a revival to her floundering reputation. Really, she couldn't ask for a better scene partner than the unnervingly present Ahmed, who may misremember classic Hollywood moviesbut still exudes a powerful sex appeal.
Trishna is now in theaters.
