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Cotton Mary |
List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48 |
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Reviews |
Features:
- Color
- Closed-captioned
- Dolby
- Widescreen
Description:
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
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