Trishna

Freida Pintos Trishna may be the most frustrating female character of the year. Okay, shes not exactly Jessica Alba merrily taking Casey Afflecks abuse in Michael Winterbottoms The Killer Inside Me, but his adaptation of Thomas Hardys classic novel is just as troubling in its restraint.

In an indistinct (even vague) exploration of sexual and emotional abuse, Winterbottom paints his heroine as an infuriatingly tacit character who refuses to speak her mind. Those knowledgeable of Hardys novel may be especially concerned by a pivotal rape scene being more-or-less absent. Instead, viewers are left to guess whether a consensual kiss led to sexual abuse. Yet on the flipside, those not familiar with the source could believe that Trishna was a 'wrong-side-of-the-tracks' romance for another half hour. They'd be in for a bit of a shock too.

Now that that's out of the way, it's worth mentioning that Trishna is also very watchable. As much as its heroine is silent in her misery, Pinto does her best to speak for Trishna through eyes that bellow with dismay, whilst Riz Ahmed is appropriately slimy. The pair have great chemistry - both sexual and aggressive - and although Ahmed's abrupt descent into a darker place is unconvincing (could a quick flick through the Kama Sutra really bring out violently misogynistic views in an otherwise charming young man?), the film just about works as a whole.

Some character shifts in the third act are given so little build-up that the pacing feels crazily skewed towards the first two. It's as though Winterbottom only remembered where his characters needed to go after it was too late to build motivation in them, leaving them racing each other to meet the film's memorably bleak finale.

It's worrying that Tess' plight translates so easily to a 21st Century woman's life, which may be why Winterbottom's film is so horrifyingly engrossing.