Review: The Braid – Cineuropa

20/06/2024 – Based on her bestseller, Laetitia Colombani’s film is a hymn to female courage, which avoids melodrama and is supported by the heartfelt performances of the protagonists

Fotini Peluso in The braid

After a successful run in France, where it attracted more than a million viewers, The braid – the third feature film by the writer, director and screenwriter from Bordeaux Laetitia Colombani, based on her hit novel of the same name which is sold in 26 countries around the world, hits Italian cinemas on June 20 via Indigo Film. It’s a story that celebrates female power, intertwining the fates of three women in wholly unpredictable ways, and whose big-screen adaptation is supported by heartfelt performances from its leads.

Accompanied by Ludovico Einaudi‘s piano notes, the story unfolds across three continents, led by three incredibly different women who are all at a crucial crossroads in their lives. In India there is Smita (Mia Maelzer), an “untouchable” whose job is to empty latrines in a village where “it is better to be born a cow than a woman.” She wants her daughter (little one.) Sajda Pathan, a true ‘untouchable’) to share her fate, so she sends her to study with the Brahmins. But discrimination follows her wherever she goes, causing the woman to leave her husband and run away with her little girl in search of a better life.

Meanwhile, in a small town in southern Italy we meet Giulia (Fotini Peluso): she works for the family business that has been making human hair wigs for generations. But when her father is involved in a serious accident, she discovers that the company is full of debt. Her mother is determined to force her into an arranged marriage to balance the books, but Giulia rebels and, with the help of a charming Sikh immigrant with long black locks (Avi Nash) with whom she eventually falls in love, she comes up with a solution to save the company and the jobs of its employees.

Last but not least, in Montreal, Canada, Sarah (Kim Raver) is a successful lawyer who is divorced and has three children. She does everything she can to balance her career and her personal life, but just as she is about to get a big promotion, she discovers that she has breast cancer. No one can know because “you can’t let yourself bleed in a world full of sharks,” so she lies to her boss and her colleagues. But how long can a person continue to accept inhumane rules and put work above well-being?

There is a hair-thin thread that unites these three “Amazons”, these three warriors who fight against prejudices and stifling traditions, and who do not know each other and will never meet. The film in turn jumps from one country to another, from one story to another (the screenplay was written by Colombani himself in collaboration with Sara Kaminsky) and for a start nothing seems to connect their distant lives, the differences of which are clearly brought out by the director, not least through the film’s sound and visuals. Only towards the end of the film do the storylines come together, and the result is decidedly moving: namely, a hymn to the courage of women that sidesteps melodrama and even makes us daydream about the origins of the objects around us.

The braid is produced by French companies Moana Films and Curiosa Films in collaboration with France 2 Cinéma, Canada’s Forum Films, Italy’s Indigo Film and RAI Cinema, and Belgium’s Panache Productions and La Compagnie Cinématographique.

(Translated from Italian)