Sold 5 million copies, the novel The braid (Grasset, 2017), by Laetitia Colombani, seduced the entire world when it was published in 2017. The author, who first made her mark as a director, dreamed from the start of adapting this ambitious story, in in which the destinies of three women evolving on three different continents intertwine without their realizing it, on the big screen.
It’s now done. The feature film, sort of Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006) in the feminine form – less accomplished and less nuanced – transposes the original story linearly with the aim of preserving a complex outcome of which nothing will be revealed, however losing in the process the emotional subtlety that literature allows.
In India, Smita (Mia Maelzer), a member of the “untouchable” community, dreams of seeing her daughter escape the life of poverty that awaits her – cleaning the masters’ latrines all day long – and of seeing her enter the ‘school. When she understands that the latter, treated like nothing by her teacher, will never be able to overcome her condition, she decides to take the road of exile and to ask for the blessing of the gods.
At the same time, in Italy, Giulia (Fotini Peluso) must find a way to save the family business – a wig manufacturing company – when she discovers that her dying father is riddled with debt. Finally, in Montreal, Sarah (Kim Raver), a renowned lawyer, secretly undergoes heavy cancer treatments so as not to lessen her chances of being promoted to head of the law firm where she excels.
Through the journeys of these three heroines with different realities, cultures and ordeals, Laetitia Colombani visibly wishes to pay tribute to the courage and resilience of women, as well as to the links, the support networks, the safety nets that They often create without knowing it, carrying the world on their shoulders.
Unfortunately, this touching objective suffers from an excess of romanticism – exacerbated by the melodramatic and sustained melodies of Ludovico Einaudi on the piano – which has little regard for the great disparities of privilege, and which transforms poverty and injustice in spectacle, seeking above all to put them at the service of the story.
Despite an intriguing premise and an interesting outcome, we seek here more to make people dream and travel than to raise awareness. The staging, taken straight from a postcard, gives pride of place to the beaches of Italy, the skyscrapers of the metropolis and the bustling streets of Delhi; breathtaking beauties who in no way follow the narrative arc and the journey of the three protagonists, leaving ample room for the abuse of stereotypes, despite the obvious talent of the actresses who carry them. To watch without asking too many questions.