Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures - The Merchant Ivory Collection

Loved this film and made the journey to Jodhpur to see the palace. Well worth it as a lover of decco architecture.

Ivory gets to incorporate his love of Indian miniature paintings--as the plot device--and actually showing wonderful examples, described with insight...but it's not a documentary--rather a character driven romp through the issues for Majarajahs in post-colonial India, with flashbacks to the 1920's. Great acting, costumes--not to mention a fabulous period car....

I love Merchant Ivory movies so I thought this one would be interesting. However, it was an older film that I assumed and after a time it just became a bit boring.

My son enjoyed it.

Merchant/Ivory return to India and make a low budget television film. In the same tradition as their documentaries and steering away from modern cinematic framing, they frame this charming story in a 1:33 ratio, giving it a casual and simple quality and I assume to fit the old televisions sets of the time. This oeuvre shows us yet again that Merchant/Ivory were less concerned about grand gestures and more connected to telling the stories they wanted to tell regardless and in spite of how much money they could raise for each production and this well into almost twenty years of film-making between them!The film boasts an incredible Indian and British cast with terrific dialogue and wonderful images as the characters weave their stories. The script is about pictures and what people will do to acquire them and their motivations for wanting these particular pictures in the Indian landscape. And it also projects a landscape of human behaviour. The pictures are like the movies we collect, the music we amass and how we may have the yearning to possess the artist’s soul.

I quite liked this one - being a big fan of Bollywood, and Merchant & Ivory, amongst other genres and auteurs I enjoy (Bergman, spaghetti Westerns, film noire, Bertolucci). These early films of Merchant and Ivory are in some ways superior to the later works, as they seem more human, with flaws, quirky, funnier. The cast, aside from Larry Pine, are superb. Saeed Jaffrey is one of my favorite actors of any place or time - always spot on, never hits a false note. Victor Banerjee as the playboy Georgie gives of the perfect combination of cultured and sophisticated ease, with more than a hint of a darker shadows, debauchery. Aparna Sen is the perfect Hindu rani - sophisticated and above it all, serene and gorgeous, with an immaculate public school accent. Dame Peggy is good, the actress who plays her travelling companion is miscast and bland, and Larry Pine - who cast him and why? While his look is good, he is sooooooooooo American naturalistic in his acting that he brings very little to the table.You can tell it is made for TV - while the exterior shots are almost all very appealing (the scenery and light in Jodpur is fantastic) the interior shots look like they have only one light. The story is very amusing, and aside from two incredibly clunker attempts at symbolism (in the middle of the film and at the very end), engaging.Not a major film, but very interesting, with the main attractions being the three Indian leads, the scenery, and a glimpse into what the lives of India's little ranis and rajas could be like.