Mr. Malcolm’s List movie review: it’s love at first slight in this gorgeous Regency romp

Director Emma Holly Jones strikes the right tone with her feature-length debut
Charlotte O'Sullivan24 August 2022

In this Jane Austen-ish caper, Zawe Ashton brings dollops of wiggly mischief to the role of Julia Thistlewaite, a flirty, impetuous and somewhat jaded schemer, who’s good with a gun and even better at holding a grudge.

It’s 1818 and Julia is furious with handsome aristocrat, Mr Jeremy Malcolm ( Sopé Dìrísù; so impressive as a furtive Sudanese refugee in the Netflix chiller His House, and delightfully grave here).

Mr Malcolm stopped wooing Julia when he discovered she knew nothing about the Corn Laws. This is because Jeremy has a list of ten requirements that his future wife needs to meet; one of them is “sensible conversation”.

To get her revenge, Julia persuades her beautiful, Sussex-based, naturally erudite but impoverished friend, Selina (Freida Pinto), to come to London and, effectively, transform herself into Mr Malcolm’s ideal woman. In order to jilt him, naturally. As soon as the pair meet, however, real sparks fly. When Selina implies that Mr Malcolm’s intellectual brooding may be self-serving, he’s charmed by her chutzpah. It’s love at first slight.

Ross Ferguson

If you’ve seen The Personal History of David Copperfield, or the TV series Bridgerton, you’ll take it in your stride that the film has been completely colourblind cast - most of the major characters don’t even resemble the rest of their families (Julia’s mother is played by Japanese actress Naoko Mori). The new element is that Mr Malcolm sees himself as having a dual ethnic identity (he makes reference, for example, to a Yorùbá saying). In this version of Regency England, the usual rules regarding wealth and privilege apply. By contrast, the rules concerning race are not as we would expect.

The movie never stops trying to make us laugh. And thanks to Oliver Jackson-Cohen (along with the aforementioned Ashton), there are many chuckles to be had. Jackson-Cohen played a pathologically abusive scientist in The Invisible Man and a buff, surly gangster in The Lost Daughter. Here, he’s unrecognisable as Julia’s languid cousin, Lord Cassidy, a fop whose heart is bigger than his brain (it’s possible that Jackson-Cohen is a fan of Blackadder the Third; Lord Cassidy, I swear, is a cross between Hugh Laurie’s Prince Regent and Tim McInnerny’s Lord Percy). Either way, the character is a bewitching goose.

Shot in Ireland, on a low-budget, Mr. Malcolm’s List looks spick and span (rooms are uncluttered; bright light pours through handsomely large windows). A few am-dram touches aside, the whole thing moves at a clip. When set against the 2019 short of the same name (starring plank-stiff Gemma Chan as Julia, and preceding Bridgerton by well over a year) it shows how much director Emma Holly Jones has evolved. Her feature-length debut ticks a lot of boxes. She and film-making, in other words, are a very fine match.

In cinemas

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in