Sam Levinson’s hypnotic black-and-white chamber piece starring Zendaya and John David Washington feels like a film that’s breathing in real time: a single night stretched into emotional infinity.
A Modern Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Shot almost entirely within one house, Malcolm & Marie instantly evokes Edward Albee’s classic, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, where love becomes a battleground for ego and resentment. Levinson gives a modern twist both thematically and visually, crafting a cool, black-and-white, geometric world of wide shots, top-down angles, and sharp compositions that echo Helmut Newton and Jean-Luc Godard. The camera glides like a third participant in the argument, circling, drifting, intruding.
Each wide shot accentuates the distance between the two lovers, elevated by the architectural composition of the set design, that makes them look both beautiful and unbearably alone. When Marie wanders through the garden, or when Malcolm searches for her from room to room, those spaces become emotional mazes. The geometry isolates them. The close-ups, meanwhile, slice through the façade, revealing the fear, shame, and pain of standing emotionally naked before the very person whose love we’re desperate to keep.
The Rhythm of Real Time
The dialogue flows with the speed of normal conversation — casual, cutting, overlapping — giving the film its real-time theatricality. The effect is suffocating yet magnetic: a see-saw of power, a rhythm of dominance and retreat that turns intimacy into performance.
At times, the building up of arguments becomes asphyxiating — the emotional beats becoming psychologically exhausting for the viewer. But that claustrophobia is part of the point: Levinson traps his characters (and the audience) inside the feedback loop of love and ego, where every small wound becomes a war.
Zendaya’s Masterclass
Zendaya delivers everything so effortlessly and incisively, transforming Marie into a mirror of heartbreak and defiance. Her stillness and the sharp arrows she throws at Malcolm’s heart and ego often hold more charge than his aggressive rants. Zendays, with effortless skill, embodies the heartbreak of a woman, the fear of being forgotten once the spotlight moves elsewhere, and the feeling that her love is taken for granted.
Marie’s pain runs deeper than hurt feelings — the film Malcolm just premiered is based on her past recovery from drug addiction, a story he mined for art and acclaim while failing to give her even a simple thank-you. As Marie reflects, “Once you know someone loves you, you stop seeing them – until you’re about to lose them.” Those words haunt the film like a ghost.
Her cold sassiness — funny, hurtful, deadpan — keeps the argument from collapsing into despair. It’s her armor, her survival instinct. Zendaya moves between fragility and ferocity with total control, revealing the inner life of a woman as she watches her identity dissolve in someone else’s narrative.
Ego vs. Love
Malcolm, by contrast, is all intensity, bravado, and insecurity. His lines reveal his strong egotistic personality and emotional blindness. His love often feels like a kind of vain self-indulgence — as if saving Marie from her past pain allows him to admire himself as the hero of the story who was able to love and save a broken soul. He turns her pain into art, yet in doing so, he claims her story as his own, forcing us to question where inspiration ends and appropriation begins.
Their relationship becomes a study of emotional extraction — ego versus love, creation versus exploitation. The result is a film where affection, cruelty, humor, and vulnerability exist in the same breath.
A Point of No Return
Malcolm & Marie feels like watching two people talk themselves past the point of forgiveness. What begins as a forgotten thank-you spirals into an autopsy of their entire relationship — every grievance, every insecurity unearthed. By the end, it feels like there’s too much truth between them to ever look at each other the same way again.
It’s a film about how love can decay under the weight of ego, and how a single argument can open every old wound until the intimacy turns poisonous. Levinson captures the beautiful terror of being known too well — and the tragedy of realizing that being seen doesn’t always mean being loved.
Verdict:
A visually stunning, psychologically searing, and emotionally exhausting two-hander — Malcolm & Marie is part Helmut Newton photo essay, part Godardian fever dream. It pushes viewers to the edge, demanding attention even in its most difficult moments.
Malcolm & Marie is available to stream on Netflix now.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5)