COTTON MARY
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Merchant Ivory Productions/Universal Pictures Director: Ismail Merchant Writer: Alexandra Viets Cast: Madhur Jaffrey, Greta Scacchi, Sakina Jaffrey, Prayag Raaj, James Wilby
There's something pathetic about the yearning of a peoples who have been freed from their colonialist overlords to continue identifying with their former rulers. If you go today to some developing nations particularly in Africa and parts of Asia, you'll find that the educated people pride themselves on speaking the European languages of their previous bosses, looking down on the majorities who speak merely the vernacular. Ousmene Sembene captured the servility of the diplomatic classes in Senegal to the French culture, particularly to its language and dress, in his masterful film of government corruption in "Xala."
What's perhaps even more wretched is the grandiosity of those who are low on the totem pole: those who seek to put themselves a few notches above their countrymen by their identification with the departed Europeans. Ismael Merchant has done a bang-up job in adapting Alexandra Viets' screenplay, "Cotton Mary," mixing humor, pathos, and satire in a narrative of a fairly insignificant, middle-aged Anglo-Indian woman in 1954--seven years after India's independence from Britain--who refuses to recognize herself as anything but a representative of British stock. Her failure to relate to her birthright as an Indian subject leads to her rejection not only by the British who stayed on in India after their government's withdrawal but by her own people and, even most important, by herself.
Ismail Merchant, the celebrated director who has long collaborated with James Ivory to bring us colorful films like "Shakespeare Wallah" and "A Room With a View," takes us to a major southern town in the Indian province of Kerala, a microcosm of the psychological battlefield pitting Indians against Anglo-Indians, and both against the British who remain. This is no mere sociological study but a deep-seated account of one dysfunctional family on the Malabar coast and their relationships with their servants. The title character is portrayed by Madhur Jaffrey, a highly talented woman as acclaimed for writing a dozen cookbooks that have increased the popularity of Indian food in the West as she is for acting in four other Merchant-Ivory productions. Her character's deterioration from a person who is already deluding herself about her status as the daughter of a British regiment officer to one who has crossed the border into madness is carefully developed in this 125-minute picture, which conveys the lovely, exotic ambiance of a town cooled by the breezes of the Indian Ocean. Her passive-aggressive relationship with the British woman who employs her, the confused and detached Lily Macintosh (Greta Scacchi), styles the entire film.
The story opens on Lily, who has gone into labor while her BBC-employed husband is in the field and not present at the birth of her daughter. The life of the prematurely born baby is imperiled because her mother's breast is dry. (Formula did not exist at the time.) As the little six-pound girl needs milk, Lily's nurse, Cotton Mary, agrees to take responsibility for finding a wet nurse--though Lily seems oddly apathetic and unconcerned about the process. Lily, whose remote behavior might remind moviegoers of a similar demeanor from Julianne Moore in Todd Haynes's film "Safe," employs Cotton Mary as nanny and housekeeper, her dependence on this conniving and repugnant woman so great that she allows her servant too much responsibility. After firing her long-time cook, Abraham (Prayag Raaj) at the behest of this woman, she feels increasingly lost and, given the regular absence of her handsome and athletic husband, John (James Wilby), she becomes increasingly withdrawn.
Credible and moving that Greta Scacchi's performance is, Madhur Jaffrey is the real jewel of this Merchant-Ivory work. As the central bad-guy in a movie that furnishes us with only one decent principal (Abraham, the loyal attendant), Jaffrey's Mary appears to relish the ways she destroys the lives of those about her. Though she gives hell to a bunch of racist British women who are friends of her mistress ("You think because I'm black you can talk to me like that!"), her real targets are those of her countrymen who are of unmixed Indian blood. "You can't trust those Indians," she regularly exclaims, "They're dirty and they steal." Successfully bearing false witness against her co-servant, Abraham, she nonetheless considers herself a religious person--though she is obviously using the accoutrements of worship such as The Lord's Prayer to further her identity with the Anglican British. Not surprisingly, her young friend Rosie, who is pale-skinned and almost able to pass for British, is taken in by Mary's exhortations. She dreams of attaining a job in a posh British home. When Blossom, who is Mary's sister and the actual wet-nurse of Lily's baby, remains baffled that the infant's mother never visits or acknowledges her efforts, she is unaware that the malevolent Mary has never told her mistress the identity of this source of nourishment. The final scene--a superb payoff that reminds one of Jean Genet's uncharitable play "The Maids" (about two servants who take turns playing the role of their employer)--ties the story together strikingly in a single dramatic confrontation.
Not Rated. Running Time: 125 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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