Heat and Dust tells the story of two women connected by blood but separated by decades. Olivia (Greta Scacchi), the young wife of a British civil servant, arrives in colonial India in the early 1920s, landing in a stifling society of bigoted Brits in exile. Sixty years later, her great-niece Anne (Julie Christie) finds a very different India as she retraces Olivia's journey and attempts to solve the mystery of what happened to her. Jumping back and forth between the 1920s and the ‘80s, the film opens with scandal and the disappearance of Olivia and then rewinds to her initial arrival. Olivia is fascinated by the culture of Royal India and romanced by the Nawab (Shashi Kapoor), the provincial ruler of a system on the verge of collapse. Anne, guided by Olivia's letters to her sister (Anne's mother), finds a very different society even as her story parallels Olivia's, including romance. Beautifully directed by James Ivory from a script by his longtime collaborator Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (adapting her own Booker Prize-winning 1975 novel) and produced by Ismail Merchant, this handsome, delicate 1983 drama was made on a small budget before A Room with a View gave the Merchant-Ivory brand mainstream success. Benefiting from a new 4K restoration, extras include an audio commentary with Merchant, Scacchi, and costar Nickolas Grace; the 1975 Merchant-Ivory short film "Autobiography of a Princess" featuring James Mason; and new and archival interviews with the actors and filmmakers. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)
Heat and Dust
Cohen, 130 min., R, DVD: $25.99, Blu-ray: $34.99 Volume 33, Issue 2
Heat and Dust
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