Gentlemen with hats and delicate teacups. Ladies with parasols. Mr. Malcolm’s List, the new Regency romance has much in common with others. This is true regardless of whether you’re thinking about the traditional-bound like Pride and Prejudice or the multi-cast like Bridgerton.
The story takes place mostly in 1818. We are introduced to the title character when he enters an opera house. He’s tall, handsome, black, and stylish.
The honorable Jeremy Malcolm, a narrator says, is “the biggest catch season,” but he has no title and is only the younger son aEUR. Details are unnecessary.
It’s not necessary to say that he soon finds himself in a box alongside Julia Thistlewaite (Zawe Ashley), and that their casually-dismissive conversation is not going well. Julia asks him briefly why they keep making foreign operas, and he replies “Are you not a Rossini fan?” She doesn’t know the name of the composer. Julia doesn’t know much about politics and her suitor soon makes only half-hearted attempts to suppress a yawn.
Julia is not called on by him again. This makes Julia the subject for gossip and scandal-sheet caricatures. When she sends Oliver Jackson-Cohen to investigate, she finds out that she doesn’t have “the fourth qualification” on Mr. Malcolm’s list of requirements for a bride.
Julia, irritated and also stung by the reduction of matrimony to an inventory, brings Selina (Freida pinto), her childhood friend, to London aEUR” country mouse to Julia’s city mouse, and devises a plan for her transformation into Mr. Malcolm’s ideal woman. Then let him find out that she has a list of requirements.
There are many things that could go wrong.
Selina reluctantly agrees. Let’s skip the intense training program Julia creates and move on to the first conversation between the couple. Selina discovers Mr. Malcolm upstairs, “reflecting upon the futility of dreams,” while Selina is at the ball.
Selina asks the question, “Is any dream impossible?” and they answer in regency fashion.
You know the direction of this movie, and Emma Holly Jones, director, and Susan Allain, screenwriter, know how to delay it.
The postponement of a project is a common occurrence since Allain published her novel in 2009. She then wrote a screenplay, which Jones heard on a 2015 podcast. In an effort to raise funding, they produced a teaser film that went online in 2019. The novel was published in 2020.
If you feel that you see echoes of Bridgerton on TV, it’s probably more the other direction.
The story is predictable and has many characters that need adjustment. There are also comic secondary characters. A leading man can even admit to having doubts.
a1C/a>>pao1I D!A1’s Mr. Malcolm looks handsome, the ladies find many ways to make him feel at home, and Mr. Malcolm’s List fulfills regency romance requirements aEUR” lush surroundings, velvets, satins, rambunctious seniors, comedy of errors, and of manners, with no prejudice aEUR” as if the filmmakers have a list.
