Product Description

An intriguing story of a british family trapped between culture tradition and the colonial sins of the past. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 06/01/2004 Starring: Greta Scacchi Madhur Jaffrey Run time: 124 minutes Rating: R Director: Ismail Merchant

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78657 in DVD
• Brand: Universal
• Released on: 2001-01-30
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 124 minutes

Amazon.com
The Merchant Ivory production company (which were also responsible for A Room With a View, Howard's End, and The Remains of the Day, among others) is the driving force behind Cotton Mary, the story of an Anglo-Indian nurse obsessed with becoming part of the British upper class. When Lily (Greta Scacchi from White Mischief and The Player) gives birth to a baby girl, she's unable to produce milk. Cotton Mary (Madhur Jaffrey) promises to take care of the child and secretly takes the baby to her sister, a wet nurse. Soon Lily feels dependent on Mary for the baby's health, and she takes the nurse into her home. Mary immediately starts to consolidate her power in the household by poisoning Lily's mind against the other servants and trying to get her relatives hired in their place. But when Lily's husband John hires Mary's attractive niece as a translator, the resulting affair threatens to unravel all of Mary's plans. Cotton Mary is beautifully filmed, with a sharp eye for the hypocrisies of colonialism. The setting of southern India makes for some vivid images, particularly when Lily's older daughter gets lost in a late-night parade. Though the pace is slow, several scenes capture the mixture of social conflict and personal demons that drive Mary to scheme and manipulate everyone around her. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

subtle and well-acted satire
From the outset, I offer two cautions: the film is primarily satire, not the tepid bourgeois drama one typically associates with Merchant Ivory and, two, the steamy picture on the cover of the DVD has little to do with the main plot of the film.
These cautions are important because if you really like those earnest, self-important, plodding PBS telenovellas like The Jewel in the Crown, you are unlikely to be happy with this sharp and original work. Madhur Jaffrey gives a first-rate performance with the sort of creative adventurousness one usually associates more with live theater than commercial film. Cotton Mary is not likeable, though she is funny; it took guts for Jaffrey and Merchant not to sentimentalize the situation. It almost certainly cost them box office. But this is thoughtful film making and gutsy, hard as steel satire. This is something other than the usual soft hearted and soft minded claptrap usually cranked out about postcolonial India.
One quibble: it could have been shorter by at least 20 minutes. For instance, the whole Charley's Aunt business could have been eliminated without any serious loss in content.

The remnants of colonialism and its people
The movie takes place on the Malabar Coast in 1954, years after India gains its independence from Britain. Cotton Mary, a hospital aide and Anglophile takes over the care of a sickly white infant sending it to her wheelchair-bound sister to breastfeed. Mary decides upon herself to take over the English household of the infant's family playing on the mother's fatigue and blindness to what is going on around her (her husband's infidelity, for one thing); pilfering her wares and framing on Abraham, a long time servant to the woman's family; and telling tales of her family to impress the white people who are smug to her stories and the people of color. Her scheme soon becomes too much for her to bear when she confronts the issue of race and class and herself individually. In the end she nearly loses the respect of her family, who believed that they would one day meet the lady of the house.

Cotton Mary - Speaks!
Servile, cunning, ingratiating and conniving... these adjectives pretty much sum up Mary's character for me. Sexually prudish, yet ambitious for some social standing, she sees her opportunity come in the form of a newborn while working as a nurse. The mother is British, the baby premature. The mother is not producing milk, and Mary takes the infant to a crippled wet nurse where the baby is eventually restored to health. Lily, the mother, offers her a job as an ayi in the house, which Mary of course seizes upon. Eventually she poisons the mind of her mistress against her tried and longstanding man-servant, such does her influence become.

On the other hand, her mistress, dope that she is, is susceptible to all of this. Which I found to be a frustrating part early on in the movie. Rest assured her stupidity will be corrected later in the movie. By the time that it is though, I was almost starting to marvel at Mary.. She is one twisted lady - though her mental extremism is largely the product of colonial history combined with her own culture and personal background.

Mary is not a likable character - she's a character, all right, but likable probably isn't one of the words that'll come to mind when you recall her. And yet this very well-done character study of a movie wouldn't have been the intriguing piece of work that it was without her. The movie never asks you to like her, but what she is says something. And no, I wouldn't call this movie satire. Just as I wouldn't call "A Passage to India" satire (which, BTW, is an excellent movie - even if you didn't like this one). There was only one scene which made me wonder, and that was when the new butler (a relative presumably) makes his entrance. We see him pulling flowers out of some flower pots (plant and all). Later, Mary scolds him "I just told you to pick some flowers". That one scene was almost spoofish (of drunken relatives?). But overall I didn't feel this was satire. If it was, what was being satirized? British colonialism against the backdrop of their religion? and some of the people who partially embraced it? the mindset of a nation that allowed them to set up camp there in the first place? No, this wasn't a satire for me, although this movie is very revealing on those topics. Christianity, for example, seemed to fuel Mary's prudish ultra-conservativism - however, she herself was born of a mixed marriage of British father and Indian mother.

This movie was a lot more engaging than I thought it would be. Of course, you spend a lot of that time being appalled at Mary's gall, and wanting to give her "madam" a swift kick! Which may be why this got low reviews from some. Still, shot in south India, the scenery is stunning and based on that alone, it'd be hard to give this picture anything less than 3 stars. Add to that, very fine production, first-rate acting and a story that left me somewhat moved, or at least in awe of the way her twisted mind worked. And while the way she is is obviously an extreme, there's something in it, some act of repression that seems to touch on something found in most cultures and societies or attitudes, for better or for worse.. No this was an interesting story. Cotton Mary said something.