“Mr. Malcolm’s List” has a scrumptious light charm. It’s a Regency romance set in London in 1818, where someone in the film is being fooled at every moment. The deceptions and symmetries are standard, but this is the kind of movie that rises or falls on whether the actors can carry the duplicity — and the innocence — aloft. And the actors here are marvelous: tart, stylish, emotionally vibrant, never more knowing than when they’re being duped.
The film, directed with an alluring blend of badinage and upper-crust sensuality by Emma Holly Jones, is based on a novel by Suzanne Allain (who wrote the screenplay), which was published in
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