If you’ve ever experienced emotional abuse from someone whose ego has completely exceeded their ability to act humanly, then a scene Malcolm and Marie could be particularly trigger. The Sam Levinson Netflix feature finds a couple straddling the boundaries of what happens when a recovering drug addict collides with a big-headed filmmaker – whose latest work involves an addict. As Marie tries to get Malcolm to recognize his influence on his project, Malcolm resists the idea that she might have anything to do with his perceived greatness.
Malcolm is set all the way when Marie qualifies him as “mediocre”; so much so that he leaves the house to exercise a literal crisis. Upon entering the house, where Marie now has the nerve to relax in a bathtub, he asks his counterpart to keep his word, and she does. This is when Marie becomes a threat to Malcolm’s pride that must be eliminated.
“Do you want to play dirty? Well, let’s go,” he begins. “I promise I can hurt you ten times worse. You’re a fucking featherweight, level one boss. I can break you like a twig.”
As you can imagine, what comes next (after 42 minutes) is neither kind nor compassionate. So here’s what happens in this tub scene – you know, in case you’re not in the mood to watch a brutal verbal assault that lasts almost ten minutes.
Shocker: He wastes it
If anyone has ever tried to get you to question your reality – especially with slurs about why your reality is unreliable – then you, my friend, have been amazed. Reducing Marie’s search for gratitude to a search for validation, Malcolm accuses his girlfriend of using her film to “justify her existence.” Instead of recognizing his film’s parallels with Marie’s life, he calls her a solipsist and maintains that his film had “nothing” to do with her.
He cavalierly discusses his past conquests
In another of the oldest tricks of an abuser in the book, Malcolm attempts to refute Marie’s involvement in his film by reviewing a list of other women he took inspiration from: Jess, an ex who has drives CitiBikes with him around Brooklyn, Jayla, an ex who ties her shoe cords with two buckles, and an exotic dancer from St. Louis named Keke, who he has sex with all over a Marriott penthouse suite. And when he couldn’t hurtfully attribute a quote from his movie to another ex-girlfriend, he attributed it to “some old line played that every nigga has heard before.” Chic.
He sheds light on his trauma
As if he hadn’t torn Marie enough already, Malcolm goes on to basically undo his entire experience: “But you’re addicted, right? That’s what makes you so unique, right? That’s what makes your contribution. so much more meaningful, isn’t it? Get all the f * ck out of here. You’re not the first broken girl I know, fuck or go out. “That is, before you notice Leah , another of his ex-girlfriends, who overdosed on Tylenol – which marks the second scene in the film where Marie’s suicide attempt is thrown in her face.
He projects
After degrading and degrading Marie because of her own injured ego, Malcolm then claims that she love to be debased and degraded. As Marie tries to maintain her dignity with a smile, Malcolm responds with disgust, “Stop smiling, because you look like a clown. Even his terrible behavior is supposed to be Marie’s fault.
And then he cries
In a radical finisher move, Malcolm ends his tirade with manic expressions of his affinity for Mary. As if that justified his assault attack, he doubled down on his denial. “I love you, baby. I don’t need you. But I love you.” Then – with tears in her eyes – Malcolm finally pays homage to Mary, but for the lowest point of her character: “This is the end, the part that makes it such a tragedy. The part where she hates herself because of all the guilt and shame. She can’t let the good in. This is the part that is based on you: her inability to understand that there is someone on this planet who just loves her, well that she doesn’t love herself. It’s you. That’s the part that isn’t fiction. “
