Cotton Mary

In India, in the 50s, an English housewife gives birth to a premature baby. An Anglo-Indian nurse looks after it from then on, using it to secure her position in the family sphere. This somewhat overlong portrait illustrates rather simply the quest for identity of an English - Indian community.

I am, or was, a diehard Merchant-Ivory fan. Then I saw "Cotton Mary". I thought it was a sad embarrassment of riches, with the exception of Ms. Jaffrey, whose title performance was badly worn flannel. Ms. Scacchi and Mr. Wilby were unable to ignite my interest, despite ample attempts by the cinematographer to try to hock their (charming) wares for that purpose. India itself came across as a dusty hot place with muddy water and bad paint jobs on the buildings. Ms. Jaffrey's direction was obviously a key element in producing such a Titanic bore. I wondered if she had fallen to the same hubris as her character. What were they thinking?

A sensitive look at the difficulties faced by a woman in colonial India, during the period when nationalism was starting to set in. The story opens with an India-born Englishwoman who goes into labour, is taken to the hospital, and gives birth to a sickly child. When it turns out that her milk doesn't come in, a nurse with mixed British/Indian heritage takes pity on her, finds a wet nurse, moves into her house, and begins to manipulate the situation to her own advantage.

As the story progresses, the husband's infidelity and disassociation is presented, as is the blindness of the wife, and the racist superiority of the expatriate British community. The Englishwoman's preteen daughter turns out to be the voice of reason who opens the woman's eyes to the situation as it is.

This is a slow-paced visually interesting story that focuses a great deal of attention on nurturing and nursing, and the complexity of a materially richer culture clashing and feeding on a materially poorer one.

This film suffers from the usual shortcomings of films about "The British Raj":it ignores the stories of a whole swathe of ordinary British and Anglo-Indians between the ruling Raj and the new Indians.I have the greatest respect for the two main actresses, Jaffrey and Scaatchi but it was a poor script and plot.The caricature of an Anglo-Indian woman was such a racial stereotype it is clear that Merchant/Ivory did little to acquaint themselves with the Anglo-Indian community either in India or in England.The idea that this community was such a self-hating hybrid of the British is short sighted in the extreme.Also the fact that the majority of Anglo-Indians didn't live in South India but in central India and the North which were "British India" is a glaring inaccuracy.Also another fact that by 1954 the majority of Anglo-Indians had emigrated to other parts of the old Empire including England to make a new life as they felt that they didn't have a future in an Independent India.Cotton Mary perpetuates an unpleasant stereotype projected on this community by British and Indians alike during the previous 200 years of Imperial rule.The film was eventually removed from circulation through the protests of Anglo-Indians worldwide.All in all this film was unworthy of Merchant/Ivory, a great disappointment.

Ah the Malabar coast and India in the early 1950's. It seems it was a pretty boring place. And stereotypes abound both on the "English" and "Indian" sides. Ismail Merchant has created a visually beautiful film with an adequate cast....but where was the character development. The lead actress gets more and more annoying as she slips into the land of make-believe.