Queenie

When I started out watching the 4-hour miniseries Queenie, I thought I'd certainly turn it off after the first fifteen minutes or so. How could an epic period piece starring the girlfriend in Ferris Bueller's Day Off be any good? Well, my apologies to Mia Sara, because not only was Queenie riveting, but she gave a very good performance as well!

The miniseries starts off with Kate Emma Davies as young Queenie, a fantastic look-a-like for Mia Sara. She's half Indian but passes for white; but she gets teased at school and shunned by white society. All she wants is out of life is to become a movie star. She doesn't have a crush at school, and she's not aware of any sex and power struggle between men and women. Unfortunately, because she's so beautiful, men can't keep their hands off her, starting with her schoolteacher. Throughout the episodes, when Mia Sara takes the lead, it's heartbreaking to watch Queenie change her life view. Because she's continually objectified and desired by men, she learns that she can use her body to get other things she wants, and she turns into a completely different person. It's tragic, but also true to life and quite fascinating.

I don't want to spoil the plot, because Queenie has such an eventful life and comes in contact with so many interesting characters, but I highly recommend this miniseries if you like the genre. With seasoned veterans joining the supporting cast-Kirk Douglas, Claire Bloom, Joss Ackland, Joel Grey, Martin Balsam, Sarah Miles, Topol, and Leigh Lawson-every scene is well-acted and compelling. I was on the edge of my seat during Queenie's journey, and just like every great miniseries, there's sadness, suspense, romance, violence, secrets, blackmail, and the perfect tying of all loose ends. For a very fun weekend with your mom, rent Queenie, light a fire, and bring out the china tea set!

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, since there may or may not be a rape scene, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

Queenie is the television mini-series based on the novel by Michael Korda who apparently likes using his famous family as subject matter. In this one he based the lead character on his aunt by marriage, Merle Oberon.

We are NOT seeing the Merle Oberon story in Queenie. Though the protagonist was Anglo-Indian this was something she kept a secret throughout her entire life, probably at great pain to herself. What Queenie does do is show the times in the Raj when she grew up in India.

Times were not easy for the real Merle or for young Mia Sara in Calcutta in the teens and twenties of the last year. For reasons that sound abominably stupid today, the British public which wanted to let India go was blocked by some very powerful folk, chiefly Winston Churchill and press magnate Lord Beaverbrook. The racist attitudes were summed up so well by Joss Ackland where he states that we can't leave India because the Moslems and Hindus will end up killing each other, but just as long as they don't bring the fight into their club. Racial and religious antagonisms which for reasons of policy both good and bad were encouraged.

Mia Sara's character is like Ava Gardner's in Bhowani Junction, struggling hard and not feeling she belongs in either British or Indian society. What Michael Korda does in the story is allow her to have a measure of pride in her heritage, something Merle Oberon could never do in her life.

But she married well and Kirk Douglas plays the fictional David Konig, the prototype for British film producer Alexander Korda. Douglas borrows liberally from his Oscar nominated role of Jonathan Shields from The Bad and the Beautiful to play Konig. I suspect there's more Shields than Korda in his performance though.

Best performances in the film are from Claire Bloom as Sara's mother and from Serena Gordon as the vicious young lady who was Ackland's daughter and her antagonist.

Queenie was done on location in Jaipur, India a city which is known for its traditional look and probably looks more like Calcutta in the twenties than Calcutta now.

I think Merle Oberon would have approved.

is it Merle Oberon portrait ? maybe. but the feelings is than it is far accuracy, scene for silhouette of American dream, melodramatic and nice. it has a lead virtue - the cast. Mia Sara does a splendid work in a role who remains clone of so many fragile characters. Joss Ackland is perfect bad guy and Kirk Douglas creates an interesting drawing of providential man. but, behind atmosphere, fight of ambitious young woman, it seems be not exactly a portrait but a mask. one of Hallmark films style, slices of pink novels, it is beautiful and touching first for a special public. window out of dusty reality, it is a large isle of fiction as diaphanous curtain for a dancer.

I remember watching this when it was first released in 1987.

It's an interesting story but for me, spoilt by the super cringing of browned up actors. It was really disgraceful to cast white actors when there were good enough South Asian actors who could have done an equally, but more authentic job. I am so glad we have moved on.

"Queenie" stars Mia Sara as a half-caste young girl in India who leaves her homeland, goes to England to be discovered, and becomes a movie star. This was inspired by the life of actress Merle Oberon, who was half-caste, and in fact, the book this was based was written by her stepson Michael Korda. I have mixed feelings about that, as his book was what is called a roman a clef, a fictional book whose main character is a real person. Her plight was the basis from which all things fictional happen in the book and therefore the movie. I feel like he profited by her private life, though none of the dramatics here really happened. Not knowing or considering the real actress, the movie is a good fast-moving and involving film with Kirk Douglas as the producer who makes her a star and Claire Bloom as her mother with very soap opera-ish melodramatics. Is that redundant? I would recommend this to anyone who didn't know about the life and career of Merle Oberon, but for those who do, it may feel a bit disrespectful of her memory to indulge in Korda's imagination and fantasy.