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COTTON MARY Send This Review to a Friend
The story written by Alexandra Viets and set in post-colonial 1950 India is a textbook drama of a subservient person who longs to be associated with her upper class employer and reject others of her status. In this case Cotton Mary is a woman who solves the dangerous problem of the wife of a British journalist. While he's a way, his wife gives birth to a baby but cannot breast-feed it. Mary secretly arranges for her sister Blossom to do the feeding, and Mary is given the job of nanny.
Mary increasingly self-appoints herself to assuming greater responsibilities and power in the household and sees herself on a level with her mistress and the results are disastrous. The mounting split between her origins and her desperation to be part of the British upper class warp her psychologically and havoc is created in the household because she becomes a conniving bitch.
Mary's condition is obviously symbolic of the relationship between Britain and India as well as an individual situation. The subject of the film is interesting enough and director Ismail Merchant offers an abundance of atmosphere. The problem lies in the acting. James Wilby is fine as the journalist working for the BBC, and although Greta Scacchi looks far from her normally beautiful self, she acts the role of Lily, the mother, well enough.
But this is a film carried by Madhur Jaffrey as Cotton Mary and she goes haywire with overbearing overacting. True, she must portray a woman who is growing more and more troubled and disoriented. But Jaffrey overdoes it to a point where the film becomes impossibly oppressive and she does not allow one to feel sympathy for Mary. Jaffrey is an accomplished actress and has a wonderful face. Her slightest expression looms extra large on screen. Director Merchant should have toned down her performance by half. A Merchant Ivory Productions and Universal Pictures release.
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