Jay Singh (Riz Ahmed) is a westernized Indian. He and his friends travel out into rural Rajasthan and stays at a local hotel. He is taken with villager Trishna (Freida Pinto) performing at the hotel. She and her father are injured in a car accident. Her father can't work and they struggle with the debt. Jay offers her a job at his family's hotel outside of Jaipur. Jay falls deeper in love and one night, he does something which changes everything.Director Michael Winterbottom brings out a beauty from the setting and Freida Pinto is a large part of that. The story lacks a focus that would raise its inherit social commentary and tension. First I would make Jay's hotel much more modern. It needs to differentiate from Trishna's home town. Then there is that night. It's filmed with so much ambiguity that it doesn't really make the point hard enough. This is an adaptation of the classic Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and there is a good parallel between the two social worlds. This movie should work a lot better than this.

About halfway through the film, why does rich boyfriend start behaving so badly? I've pondered this and come to a simple answer: Because he can. He's not merely financially comfortable, he's so wealthy that his freedom is practically unbounded and he can get away with just about anything. Society (including the legal system) imposes very few limits on BF's conduct. His world-weary father seems nice to Trishna, but in a sort of condescending, noblesse oblige way. There's certainly no requirement that he be nice to her.Unfortunately I don't think writer-director Winterbottom dramatizes any of this particularly well. During the 2nd half of the film, BF's badness is as inexplicable to us as it is to Trishna.Nevertheless, I give the film credit for the romantic and fun first half. The music is wonderful, Trishna and BF are gorgeous (really) and the photography of India is better than a lot of western directors achieve.

Trishna – CATCH IT (B) Trishna is loosely based upon critically acclaimed 1800's novel "Tess of the D'Urbervilles". This is a story of young girl whose life is destroyed by the circumstances and love. Tess of the D'Urbervilles is a beautiful novel and the story is more complex than Michael Winterbottom decides to adopt in his adaptation. Here the director only chooses to pick up the poor girl and a rich man who first makes and then destroys her life. He left many key characters and moment from the magnificent novel, which I think would have made this movie more interesting. Otherwise Trishna seemed more like an erotic version relies on sex only. Once you become aware of the novel you will understand that the director chooses an easy way to make this an erotic bonanza. We never gets to hear why Trishna doesn't leave from sexual abuse later or at least tell him that she is felling like a sexual victim but sadly we never get to hear her point of view. She does what she was told by men in her life from her father to the man she falls in love with. Freida Pinto is truly a Revelation, starting from Slumdog Millionaire, then to Red Woman in Woody Allan's ensemble YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER to Immortals with Henry Cavill to Rise of the Planet of the Apes with James Franco and now in Trishna, she has proved why everyone wants to work with her. Riz Ahmed is superb; he is charming, passionate and evil in one body all together. On the whole Winterbottom successfully adopted the Indian atmosphere and also was able to take out brilliant performance from Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed but I think he failed to do justice to the Thomas Hardy novel "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" because it was never about eroticness it was about a young girl destroyed by her circumstance. If I forget it's based upon this novel than it's a very nice movie.

Trishna is a love story based on the Thomas Hardy novel Tess of the D'urbervilles. I haven't read it or seen the Polanski adaptation with Nastassia Kinski. Freida Pinto is the Tess character this time round, and she is breathtakingly beautiful; so casting is not the problem here. The story is so fractured, and the editing so poor, that I don't know what the filmmakers were going for.It begins with a group of bored upper class Indians on a balcony discussing the best cities to party in. They get in a Jeep and drive recklessly around like a bunch of college frat boys. They visit an ancient temple where Jay; the leader of the pack, spots the stunning Trishna. He gets up to dance with her and later drops her off at the lower class families home. The next day, Trishna is riding on the back of her father's truck to deliver produce when they crash into another vehicle and her dad is so badly injured that he cannot work. Jay comes to the rescue by offering Trishna a job at his father's big resort hotel. She works as a servant and he eventually has an encounter with her. The next morning she goes back home very quietly. Three months of vomiting and a visit to a doctor confirm a pregnancy which is terminated. Jay reappears, and a few dance numbers are presented in between for no apparent reason. Trishna ends up at another of Jay's dad's hotels working once again as a servant. They also have a secret sexual relationship which grows cold and distant very quickly. At this point, I had lost interest in both Jay and Trishna. The camera loves Ms. Pinto, but she needs better material to work with.