“Malcolm & Marie,” at least, looks the part.
Shot in slinky black-and-white, with John David
Washington and Zendaya playing a sharply
dressed couple just back to their stunning,
modernist Los Angeles home, “Malcolm & Marie”
has the stylized appearance of “Who’s Afraid
of Virginia Woolf,” as well as the cocktails and
shouting matches.
But if Edward Albee’s scathing play and Mike
Nichols’ scalding screen adaptation used the
anger and pain of a boozing couple to burrow
brutally into marriage, the domestic fury of writer-
director Sam Levinson’s millennial melodrama is
glossier and sexier but of far less substance.