MOVIE REVIEW : CHRISTIE DOMINATES AN INDOLENT ‘MISS MARY’

Maria Luisa Bemberg’s “Miss Mary” (at the Fine Arts) summons the era between 1930 and 1945 when the right wing reigned supreme in Argentina, affording lives of indolence and luxury for the landed aristocracy.

Julie Christie, captivating in the title role with her best part in years, dominates the film, a moody, perceptive period piece. Although “Miss Mary” is rewarding and affecting, it is also highly uneven, leaving you with the feeling that Bemberg has made her point but not as well as she might have.

In the summer of 1938 the very British, very proper Miss Mary arrives at the vast English-style, half-timbered country estate of an immensely rich Argentine family to serve as the governess of its three children, the lonely teen-age Johnny (Donald McIntyre) and his sisters, the self-dramatizing Carolina (Sofia Viruboff) and tag-along little Teresa (Barbara Bunge). Their parents are the virile, sensual Alfredo (Tato Pavlovsky), a forceful patriarch and dedicated cynic, and the fragile, puritanical Mecha (Nacha Guevara), who tirelessly and endlessly plays Satie’s mournful “Gnossienes” on the piano and retreats to a storage closet, which she calls her “crying room,” when she’s overcome by melancholy.

Also living in the household are a pair of dotty grandparents, lost in their own world, and Mecha’s handsome, rakish brother Ernesto (Gerardo Romano), who manages the estate and who closely follows the course of the Spanish Civil War. Alfredo and Ernesto are the very embodiment of machismo. For all its art-film atmosphere, “Miss Mary” offers the same gratification as the soaps: the vicarious enjoyment of the miseries of the overly rich.

As in “Camila,” her previous historical drama, Bemberg and her co-writers equate sexual and political repression with feminist fervor. Once again, the punishment for sexual transgression of society’s rigid mores is severe, although not as drastic as in “Camila,” which was set a century earlier. However, because “Camila” was a far simpler story, involving fewer principals and a much briefer time span, the sexual-political repression equation didn’t seem so literal and schematic as it does in “Miss Mary.”

Even though Bemberg takes pains to establish subtle foreshadowing of the consequences of Johnny’s attraction to Miss Mary, its nature is neither entirely clear nor altogether convincing.

In Christie’s splendid playing, Miss Mary is an unabashed British imperialist, a dowdy prig, as much a puritan about sex as Mecha is. But she is, in her rigid way, strong, warm and loving, qualities Mecha does not share. This, coupled with Johnny’s awareness of the woman’s own loneliness, apparently is enough to cause him to develop a serious crush on her--even though Miss Mary looks to have about as much sex appeal as Nurse Ratched. A more serious problem is the distributors’ foolish requirement that most of the film be in English when it’s strictly an art-house item in any language. That English would be spoken by Argentines among themselves seems unlikely, even in the face of their fervent Anglophilia; the language contributes a certain stiffness to the film that only underlines Bemberg’s tendency to let her pacing fall victim to the indolence she depicts.

If you’re a dedicated fan of intellectual, subtitled fare, “Miss Mary” (rated R for adult themes and situations) is worth seeing and inspires admiration for its effectiveness in re-creating and illuminating a special, rarefied world in all its considerable complexities. But as drama it doesn’t quite mesh.

‘MISS MARY’

A New World Pictures presentation. Executive producer Lita Stantic. Director Maria Luisa Bemberg. Screenplay Jorge Goldenberg, Bemberg; from an idea by Bemberg, Beda Docampo Feijoo, Juan Bautista Stagnaro. Camera Miguel Rodriguez. Music coordinator Luis Maria Serra. Associate producers Joan Baribeault (U.S.A.), Carlos Gaustein (Argentina). Film editor Cesar D’Angiolillo. With Julie Christie, Nacha Guevara, Tato Pavlovsky, Gerardo Romano, Luisina Brando, Iris Marga, Guillermo Battaglia, Sofia Viruboff, Donald McIntyre, Barbara Bunge (Teresa as a child), Nora Zinsky (Teresa as an adult). In English and Spanish, with English subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).