The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 88

SUNDAY 19 FEBRUARY 1995 --r- 'i Cn ft tomit ttMo Minis GMfiMinig wi 1 In a bumper week, Philip French sees two wonderful films by directors who have stormed from mediocrity to maturity Camilla (Tandy) and an insecure young folk-music composer (Bridget Fonda) as they journey from Georgia to Toronto. There is considerable poignancy in the way Tandy's piercing blue eyes look unflinchingly at us from that handsome, expressive face. Her presence is as strong and as vulnerable as a steel-spring that we know is near uncoiling. Two scenes are especially touching. The most obvious is a reunion between Camilla and her long-lost lover, played by Hume Cronyn, Tandy's husband since 1942.

There is such playful tenderness between them. The other scene, almost unbearably poignant, occurs on a beach in Georgia. Without a touch of self-consciousness, Camilla strips naked and encourages Fonda to join her in the sea. Three animal movies have arrived for half-term, the least of which is the Australian director George Miller's Andre, a sentimental tale of the friendship between a seal and a little girl in a Maine fishing port back in innocent old ig62. It's as wholesome as white, sliced bread with added preservative, but somewhat offensive in the way the seal is turned into a performer.

Far better, though even more determinedly anthropomorphic is Caroline Thompson's handsomely designed and photographed Black Beauty, a respectful adaptation of the children's novel written in 1878 by the quaker author iVnna Sewell. It's about the life and hard times of a horse (his thoughts voiced by the Scottish actor Alan Cumming) as he passes from owner to owner, moving from the idyllic English countryside to a hellish Victoria city, experiencing love, cruelty and injustice. The working-class are kindly; the upper-classes insensitive to, and exploitative of, both man and beast. It's not exactly on a par with Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, but it will have the kids in tears and leaving the cinema demanding the retention of Clause Four and determined to vote Labour when they're 18. Children will most enjoy Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, despite (or more likely because of) the fact that it's nearer to being a cross between a Turzan film, Aladdin and a Temple of Doom imperial adventure yarn than to Kipling's didactic Bildunflsroman.

It is crude, old-fashioned stuff but the Indian settings are spectacular. Kids who have seen Disney's cartoon version will note in-jokes like the kindly doctor (John Cieese) commending to Mowgli 'the bare necessities of life' and die leader of the apes being called Lxrd Louis after Louis Prima. Bandit Queen (119 mlns, 18) Cu'rzpn WeSt End, Screen on the Green and general release The Shawshank Redemption (143 mlns, 15) Odeon Leicester Square Camilla (94 mlns, PG) MGM Shaftesbury Ave Andre (94 mlns, U) MGM Trocadero and general release Black Beauty (88 mlns, U) Warner West End and general release Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (114 mlns, PG) Odeon West End and general release mm i A controlled indignation that, like Rosi's film, shows how politicians, criminals and the police conspire to preserve a status quo that a nation officially disavows. Bandit Queen ends with Phoolan Devi going to jail, and by all accounts she had a pretty terrible 12 years inside. Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption is a jail movie in a classic Hollywood mode and it too is about injustice, hypocrisy and the preservation of personal dignity.

His script is based on a rather good Stephen King novella and has two heroes. One is the film's narrator Red (Morgan Freeman), a middle-aged convict Bandit Queen as exciting as a Peckinpah western, as observant as a film by Satjayit Ray serving a life sentence for murder at Maine's Shawshank State Prison. The other is Andy (Tim Robbins), young banker given two life sentences in 1,947 for killing his. wife and her lover. Andy had iconteniplated the crime, but professes his innocence ahfl the picture covers' his zo year of incarceration, the influence he has oh his fellpw nmatcs, and his friendship with Red.

Darabont directs with authority, cutting rapidly wheri he needs to, but mostly creating a deliberate pace that draws Us into an enclosed of oppressive routine. His touch is firm but supple, and while there's plenty of laughter, it Isn't the sort known as comic relief. Freeman makes a substantial figure jjj sis8" weapon to degrade and humiliate her, and she brought hope and pride to the exploited and downtrodden. Bandit Queen is, firstly, a lucid narrative about injustice, as exciting as a Peckinpah western and as sharply observant of rural folkways as a film by Satyajit Ray. The arid landscape of scrub and deep ravines is a resonant setting, at once awesome and protective, and Kapur uses the imposing road and railway bridges that cross this wilderness both as part of his drama and to suggest the way modern India passes so indifferently through this feudal world.

The director himself makes his brief telling appearance as a sneering sexist lorry driver who gets the butt of Phoolan's rifle in his face. Second, the movie is about the creation of an hero on the lines of Robin tyood or Jesse James, and of how Phoolan (superbly and' courageously impersonated by Seema Biswas) grows with her legend. Third, and Kapur use Phoolan's career to anatomise a whole society(: the Rosi did with life ofa comparable Sicilian social bandit in the Marxist classic' SalvatQreGiiiHanq (ig6i), Policies hatched in a circumspect; mealy-mouthed manner in a government office in Delhi arc shown being lethally discharged on the dusty streets of a village in Utiai Pradesh. Bandit Queen is a work of ft a Tim Robbins, left, and Morgan Freeman do time in The Shawshank Redemption of the humane, ironic Red, a youthful killer grown into a man of wisdom and probity. Andy is a more complex character, venose mystery and inner life Robbins skilfully projects without making him appear priggish.

Andy uses his gifts as a financial expert to manipulate the sadistic guards and the crooked warden ('i had to come to prison to become a criminal', he remarks) but at times he defies them to his considerable cost. While attaining a form of spiritual transcendence, he shows how humanity can be brought to an uncaring institution, and he proves that hope, friendship and fellow-feeling are more important to survival than a brutal Darwinian fitness. The Shawshank Redemption is a fine example of cinematic storytelling, and it's highly satisfying in the way it fulfils traditional expectations while providing plausible surprises. The casting is immaculate, right down to the last gnarled old convict (there's a marvellous performance from the craggy James Whitrnore as the jail's oldest inmate). The British clnematographer Roger Deakihs gives the picture a stylish penumbra! look somewhere between Gustave Dord and Edward Hopper, Thomas Newman's efFcctjve score artfully incorporates duet from The Marriqae of Figaro and the Ink Spots' version of 'If I Didn't Care', The late Jessica Tandy'made her final appearance at the age of 87 in Deepa Mehra's Camilla, a thinly plotted Canadian road movie tracing the developing friendship between the octogenarian violinist CTpihe only surprise more pleasant I I than the appearance of a film of quality from an unknown director is a good movie from someone whose previous work has shown no promise of excellence.

Last week, Peter Jackson, hitherto known only for adolescent taste-lessness, came up with Heaumly Creatures. This week, Shekhar Kapur, a 50-year-old director of Bombay movies, none of which has been shown outside the subcontinent, has given us the boldest and best Indian film in a decade. And Frank Darabont, screenwriter on such clinkers as The Fly and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, makes his directorial debut with one of the best American films of the past couple of years. Scripted by Mala Sen, Kapur's Bandit Queen tells the true story of Phoolan Devi, the village girl from the impoverished state of Uttar Pradesh who rebelled against her humiliating treatment as a low-caste woman and became a dacoit or bandit. A 15-minute pre-credit sequence deals with her sale as a child bride in 1968, her punishment for daring to answer her high-caste tormentors, and her rape at the age of by her callous husband.

The rest of the movie concentrates on the four years leading up to her surrender in 1983, during which, accepting her role as an outcast, Phoolan rose to be a bandit leader. She exacted terrible revenge on those who used rape as a political.