Cotton Mary dreary, defeatist

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This article was published 01/11/2001 (8985 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

COTTON Mary is an effective expression of the dehumanizing consequences of colonialism and class prejudice — so effective in fact that there is not a likable character in sight, merely unpleasant social types trapped in an unforgiving power structure.

Ismail Merchant usually works on the producing side of the prolific, period-piece Merchant-Ivory filmmaking team but makes occasional forays into directing (The Proprietor). His latest work is set on the Malabar Coast in 1954, as the English citizens who have “stayed on” interact uneasily with the small community of Anglo-Indians, those people of mixed race whose uncertain and conflicted social position has become even more precarious in post-Independence India.

The titular character is played by Madhur Jaffrey, well-known as a cooking writer but also an accomplished actor. Mary is a middle-aged nurse, daughter of an Indian mother and a British soldier, and her vocal love of Christianity, a good cup of tea, lavender soap and the dear Queen, taken with her ferocious loathing for all things Indian (she refers to Indians contemptuously as “those people”), will eventually combine into tragic impossibility.

When Englishwoman Lily Macintosh (Greta Scacchi) gives birth to a sickly baby, Mary insinuates herself into the Macintoshes’ privileged household, using the child’s fragile health as a hold.

Surrounded by silver tea services and imported marmalade, Mary’s ambition to be recognized as a true British lady consumes her, and she alternates between painful sycophancy and furious envy. Lily, meanwhile, is the equally unappealing counterpart in this ugly post-colonial power equation, with her exasperating passivity and willed blindness to what is going on around her.

Jaffrey’s performance may very well be brilliant, but it is also grating enough to set your teeth on edge. Scacchi, who debuted in Merchant and Ivory’s Heat and Dust 17 years ago, also hints at a complex woman caught by social constraint. The effectiveness of both characters, however, is cut by the limitations of a brittle screenplay and unsympathetic directing.

With nothing much between bored wealth and struggling poverty, the atmosphere of Cotton Mary is dreary and defeatist. The film, unfortunately, doesn’t just describe and analyze these qualities, it shares them.