Again turns up the heat
A longer version of this review was originally published Nov. 9, 1983. The film has been digitally restored and is being rereleased.
“Heat and Dust” draws us into a treacherous, precarious world of vanished splendor, that of royal India under British rule during the ’20s.
It was a time when a bejeweled native prince, seated upon a throne and fanned by servants, received the British and their wives while the women in his own family remained in seclusion, peering curiously at the festivities with opera glasses through a bamboo screen.
The heroine (Greta Scacchi) is not the typical colonial wife, though she’s married to a blandly handsome civil servant in the small state of Satipur. She’s pretty, witty and has a streak of recklessness. As Scacchi gets caught up in the boredom and torpor of her rigid colonial existence, she finds herself gradually drawn to Satipur’s handsome prince (Shashi Kapoor), who is as corrupt as she is naive.
Not content with telling just Scacchi’s story, director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala have framed it with a present-day inquiry by Scacchi’s grandniece (Julie Christie), who has come to India to find out all she can about her scandalously romantic relative. Cutting back and forth between past and present often proves distracting, however.
While “Heat and Dust” attempts too much, it rewards the patient viewer with its unique Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala sensibility. They appreciate the grandeur that was imperial India while at the same time laying bare its evils, both colonial and native. As a result, “Heat and Dust” is charged with ambivalence. “Heat and Dust,” (1983). Rated: R. Running time: 2 hours, 13 minutes. Playing: Laemmle Royal, West L.A.; Laemmle Town Center, Encino; Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena.