But the visuals are what struck me immediately - from the achingly minimalist home that provides the setting to the use of 35-mm-photographed shadows within it - which feel slick yet sterile, devoid of the gravitas intended by such production choices. Malcolm & Marie is a failure on nearly every level. (The actors also produced the film and had a hand in how it was shaped, especially the former.)

But to pull off such a spare premise requires strong storytelling and precise casting - which this film glaringly lacks, even though writer/director Sam Levinson wrote the story with Zendaya and John David Washington in mind. After all, much of great cinema rests on the sparks that develop between two actors in a room.

A black-and-white two-hander guided by the rising tensions between its central couple could have bloomed into an intriguing picture if it was shaped by the right artists. The initial impulses that brought Netflix’s Malcolm & Marie into being - which was filmed during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in Carmel, California last summer with a twenty-person crew in two weeks - weren’t wholly rotten, even though the film they ushered into being clearly is. No one comes out of this film unscathed - including Zendaya.