Weekly round-up

Widows’ woes and a Brideshead
not worth revisiting

by HILLARY BRENHOUSE

La Femme Oubliée
(The Forgotten Woman)
Dilip Mehta’s distressing doc is a sort of follow-up to big sister Deepa Mehta’s Oscar-nominated Water, which was a fiction about the plight of an eight-year-old Indian widow circa 1938. Raw, upfront interviews put real faces on the marginalized women treated in sis’s film, shedding light on the destitution and isolation of India’s 40 million or so widows.

Wandering through the streets and ashrams of Hindu holy city Vrindavan, the movie captures with sincerity and sensitivity the wives of the deceased, driven out of society in the name of tradition and left on temple steps. Some are stooped over, half-blind beggars howling religious hymns, others pitifully bright, young war widows. Almost all have been blamed for the deaths of their husbands, abandoned by their families, forbidden to remarry, and had their inheritances filched by in-laws.

The camera does spot flashes of hope, though. Canadian-born Ginny Shrivastava, who founded the Association of Strong Women Alone after she lost her own Indian husband, is one of the activists who stars in a segment on the education and empowerment of some of these cast-offs.

Another bit zeroes in on an oblivious, upper-class urbanite in a salon chair, but the enlightening exposé never quite fleshes out a contrast between India’s swanky suburbs and its stories of poverty and neglect.

Even if Mehta insists he isn’t trying to make a political statement, the film is a powerful call for change; nearly 70 years later and reality still resembles the dismal set of Water. Prepare for a resonant, no-frills account (though prolonged facial close-ups can be a tad stagy) that isn’t always easy on the eyes.

Brideshead Revisited
Fans of the Evelyn Waugh classic may swallow this condensed, lacklustre literary adaptation, but first-timers are liable to nod off before the sedate show’s abrupt end. Set in England at the dawn of WWII, Brideshead follows Charles Ryder (a convincing, though dull, Matthew Goode) while the impressionable middle-class atheist falls in with ultra-Catholic aristocrats the Marchmains.

After befriending the swishy Lord Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), Charles is invited to visit his sprawling estate at Brideshead and there meets god-fearing Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson) and Sebastian’s jaded sister Julia (Hayley Atwell). As he becomes closer to the high-strung, high society family, drawn by Julia, he sends Sebastian into an alcoholic haze and realizes how strong a hold Catholic guilt has on the children.

Julian Jarrold’s rendition of the book on British decadence may be hyper-dramatic—everyone is extra religious and Sebastian is a few shades more flamboyant—but it’s still inert and uninspiring. The writers have tried to turn Waugh’s sardonic tale into a forbidden love story, which never quite comes together even after a painfully drawn-out two hours. (Not to mention that Goode and Atwell have zero chemistry.)

Packing in 330 pages also makes for some shaky transitions—neither Ryder’s shift from passive onlooker to man of action nor Julia’s from sarcastic social climber to reformed woman in love are convincing. Unsurprisingly, the pic belongs to Thompson, who skillfully balances staunch religious morality and restrained vulnerability as the Marchmains’ domineering matriarch. Purists are better off renting the award-winning 1981 miniseries because Brideshead isn’t worth revisiting on the big screen.

Both films open this
Friday, July 25

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