Miss Mary

This was not one of Julie Christie's greatest roles, as she plays a very prim and up-tight British governess who goes to work for a rich family in the Argentine countryside in 1930. She has little opportunity to show any emotion, and spends most of her time trying not to. It is a strange tale and a strange film. The direction by Maria Luisa Bemberg is rather wooden and uninspired. The editing is absolutely terrible, and when a train pulls out of a station you can be sure we see too much of it doing so, the concept of cutting away seemingly having little grip on the editor's awareness. Several of the Argentine cast of this film, which is mostly shot in English, are very good, but as their names mean little to those of us in other parts of the world, there is little point in mentioning any of them individually. There are some bizarre political statements as full-screen text at front and back of the film, which make no sense, the last informing us that after 1945, Peron transformed Argentina forever. I don't know what that has to do with the price of tea. Was the film made under censorship rules? Who knows? Several times, members of the rich family ask Julie Christie: 'Do you think we have too much money?' Perhaps the script writer was a closet socialist? Are we meant to be witnessing the decadence of the rich? This is never made clear. The madness of the mother and the older daughter are tragically portrayed, and the acting is good. The puppy love of the son for Julie Christie is extremely well done, and the actor most convincing. Most of the fascination of this film, which jumps confusingly back and forth in time over a period of 15 years, is the intense portrayal of the claustrophobic atmosphere of the rich family in their huge house in the middle of a very flat nowhere, surrounded by servants and cattle and with too little to do. We get sucked into this, partially because a real house and real locations are used, and it is all so authentic. The costumes are impeccable, and all the men spend all their time in perfect white suits which are never soiled and do not seem to wrinkle. The mad mother constantly plays Erik Satie's 'Gnossiennes' on the grand piano, very badly, but as it goes on for the entire film, it is in the end an effective if somewhat haunting and demented motif of isolation. We don't see films like this very often, and it is many years indeed since the films of Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, such as 'Summerskin', excited the film critics of New York and briefly and powerfully reminded people in the outside world that there is a country called Argentina which actually exists 'down there', wrapped in its own dream. If it weren't for the brilliant Borges, the memoirs of W. H. Hudson, the corrupt Eva Peron, and the magnificent tango, we might not even know that much.

Miss Mary was meant to be an excellent motion picture. It is well written, with intelligent dialogue, the color photography is stunning. The cast was well chosen and includes some of the best Argentine players, who brilliantly support the wonderful work of Julie Christie. Maria Luisa Bemberg has shown her directorial talent before.

But... this picture in completely incoherent. The editor makes the action go back and forth, inserting flashbacks that could have been more comprehensible if shown in the natural order. Miss Mary is a movie with no sense of time. We never know if the sequence we are watching happens in 1938, in 1945, or in between. We never know when the action goes from the "estancia" to Buenos Aires. It has been a loss for the art of the cinema, that modern editors have forgotten the classic grammar of the great directors of the past, such as the fading ins and fading outs that indicated the pass of time, and now limit themselves to cut and cut and cut. The sense of continuity and the sense of time have been lost. And Miss Mary is a sorry example of what has happened to movie editing since the 70's.

Aristocratic society collides with the working class aesthetic in a film renowned for its eerie take on sex and its consequences. While the lurid detail of the relationships is rather subtle and soft, the implications of these actions prove to be mightier than any fight or explosion. Tempered with undertones of lust and impropriety, this film takes on this subject in such a way, the viewer might wonder if this story really is about sex. While Miss Mary will not tantalize audiences with its sexual scenes of conquest, its underlying message may be more powerful than anything else.