"Trishna" tells the story of a beautiful woman who is cruelly mistreated by a cold-blooded man. This man is so clueless, so emotionally tone-deaf, that his brutality threatens to undermine the film. That becomes all the more puzzling because he doesn't begin that way. He undergoes a change in his nature that it's hard for us to understand on an emotional level. And that isn't a weakness in the story but a strange kind of strength; we watch in horror as a tragedy unfolds.