Mr. Malcolm’s List, a new Regency romance from Emma Holly Jones, is a charming film. I love a good period romance film, and we don’t see nearly enough of them. But more and more, I see directors shy away from the romance aspect of romantic comedies. Mr. Malcolm’s List is witty, funny, and wonderfully acted — but there’s an element of passion missing that holds it back from greatness.
Julia Thistlewaite (Zawe Ashton) is getting older. She’s had four seasons without making a match. So when she is asked to the opera by the most eligible bachelor in London, Jeremiah Malcolm (Sope Dirisu), she is understandably thrilled. Unfortunately for her, the date goes badly, and Mr. Malcolm does not ask for a second. Soon, a caricature of Mr. Malcolm leaving her spreads around town, further hampering her already tarnished reputation.
So Julia enlists an old friend, Selina Dalton (Freida Pinto), in a scheme. See, it turns out that Mr. Malcolm has a list of all the qualities he demands in a bride. She must be talented and smart, pleasant but not too forceful, have good family connections, and more. Selina is beautiful and educated. With Julia’s help, and an assist from her bumbling cousin Lord Cassidy (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), Selina could entrap Mr. Malcolm, only to dump him later because of her own list.
Unfortunately, Selina and Mr. Malcolm appear to have genuine chemistry. The longer the ruse goes on, the more it seems like Selina is falling in love with the object of Julia’s revenge. And beyond that, Captain Henry Ossory (Theo James), a dashing military man looking to settle into a life of leisure, has just arrived in London, and he has his eye on Selina as well.
“There is a gentleman, a Mr. Malcolm. He humiliated me.”
The premise is… okay, ‘basic’ might be the wrong word. That’s clearly pretty complicated. But it will be a familiar sort of set-up to anyone who engages with romance. The layers of artificiality and misunderstanding are classic to a certain type of romantic comedy, after all. And Mr. Malcolm’s List executes them well. Of particular note is the cast.
See, Mr. Malcolm’s List went with colorblind casting, to excellent effect. Indian actress Freida Pinto is cousins with Korean-American actress Ashley Park. English-Ugandan actress Zawe Ashton is the daughter of Japanese actress Naoko Mori. Rather than casting for family resemblance, they appear to have just picked the best person in each role.
And you know what? It pays off. The performers in Mr. Malcolm’s List are universally phenomenal. It’s hard to single anyone out. Ashley Park’s role is brief, with just two short scenes, and she crushes them both: She’s funny and ditzy, a cross between Pride and Prejudice‘s Mr. Collins and Lydia. Oliver Jackson-Cohen is relentlessly charming as a goodhearted but chronically overwhelmed fool. The supporting cast is universally appealing here. As a romantic comedy, Mr. Malcolm’s List works beautifully.
The core performers are also excellent. Freida Pinto is gorgeous, and she sells a difficult role: The kind-hearted but educated country naif. I’ve seen a lot of actresses struggle to walk that line, and Pinto does so flawlessly. And if anything, Sope Dirisu’s role is even harder, and is executed flawlessly. He is handsome but cold, distant but charming. He is autistic-coded, something that comes up but isn’t fully explored. These are hard to pull off as a romantic lead, but Dirisu is daunting and vulnerable in equal measure.
The problem is, unfortunately, that Mr. Malcolm’s List lacks passion. Not sex scenes. I enjoy a sex scene, but not every film — and not every romance — needs one. But romance, even romantic comedy, need to give the relationships they’re trying to sell time to breathe. This is why, for example, In the Mood for Love is such a beloved romance film: It’s a feature-length look at how these people fell in love.
Mr. Malcolm’s List doesn’t have that. For all its criticism of the titular list, of the mechanized way Mr. Malcolm goes about finding love, the film sometimes has the feel of a checklist.
For example, a minor spoiler. If you are at all familiar with the genre, you’ll likely be able to tell immediately that Julia and Captain Ossory will end up together. Zawe Ashton and Theo James are both incredibly charming, and they do have chemistry. But the movie never gives that burgeoning relationship time to breathe. What does the Captain see in her? When does he stop trying to seduce Selina and begin trying to seduce Julia? Are they attracted to one another physically? What have they bonded over?
Even the main relationship, between Selina and Mr. Malcolm, suffers somewhat from this. We see Selina checking things off Mr. Malcolm’s list… but the film is explicit, that this is an act for her and a shield from him. It never wrestles with the pair of them as an actual couple. The film gives Pinto a bit more room to ‘study’ Mr. Malcolm, to come to see his virtues and push back against Julia’s trick. But it’s one-sided.
The biggest challenge in most romantic films is simple: You can’t really see two people fall in love. Love is a nebulous thing, not something the camera can really capture. But performers can sell us on love. Traditionally, this is done with The Gaze, the way the two romantic leads look at one another. These are often moments of silence, of voyeurism on our part as an audience, where we see something one of the leads does not. It is in those moments that the Kuleshov Effect kicks in and something triggers in our brains and we say: Yes. This is love.
Mr. Malcolm’s List doesn’t really give us those moments. People are always talking. The dialogue is good, sometimes really excellent, but there are very few moments where it gets out of the performers’ way and lets them sell the passion. They talk ardently about their feelings, but the screen doesn’t let them have the interiority they need.
That’s not an enormous problem. As I said above, Mr. Malcolm’s List is charming. It’s enjoyable. I will almost certainly be revisiting it on a sick day sometime, or with friends. And while it falls prey to some of the problems that pester many modern romantic comedies, an excellent set of performers, paired with fantastic costuming, help it overcome those issues.