DVD: Trishna

Michael Winterbottom's third Thomas Hardy adaptation transposes the plot of Tess of the d'Urbervilles to contemporary India, making its heroine (Freida Pinto) a sheltered country girl from Rajasthan.

The story retains the cruel sting of Hardy's plotting, but the improvised banter and the fly-on-the-wall footage of Indian life give it a buzzing vibrancy which you wouldn't find in the average bonnets-and-breeches period piece.