The magic of the braid

Laetitia Colombani wrote and directed her third feature film The braid by adapting his first novel of the same name. The film arrives to us this Friday after a very good run in France. Story of an adventure that continues to continue.

If Laetitia Colombani had to accept that her successful novel The braid was adapted for the cinema, she had to be the one to write the screenplay. When talking about it with her, we immediately understand that it was not out of ego that she felt the need to be the one who would bring to the screen this book read by millions of people around the world. In fact, she still seems surprised to see how far this novel, published in 2017, has come: the five million copies sold, the translations into several dozen languages, the adaptation into a children’s book, the adaptation into a play. theater (coming soon) and, today, the resulting feature film that she directed herself. If the story of the three women of The braid had to be told on screen by Colombani herself, it’s because she cared too much about it to leave it in the hands of one or another filmmaker.

“I was contacted by producers as soon as the novel was published and I wanted to take a moment to think about it,” confides Laetitia Colombani, met in Montreal this week, during her visit to the metropolis, where she elsewhere filmed a third of his film.

“I was a little scared by the scale of the project: an ambitious film, shot on three continents, in three languages, two of which I did not master. I had a lot of questions. And when I asked myself if I would be happy with entrusting this very personal story, which I nurtured for two years, to another director, the answer was no. »

The story of The braid, although it touches on cultures that are not those of the author, although it recounts daily lives that she did not experience, is intimately linked to the life of Laetitia Colombani. Firstly because the character of Sarah is inspired by her best friend, also a lawyer, who also suffered from cancer a few years ago. Also because India is a country that she has often visited and which fascinates her. Finally and above all because the filmmaker has always been inspired by women. “I wanted to talk about them,” she said.

So Smita, Giulia and Sarah were born under his pen, three women living respectively in India, Italy and Canada, who a priori have nothing in common, but who in fact share an increased power of resilience as well as a piece of their history. “I wanted to touch on different cultures and different continents to create a parallel and show very different women while suggesting how much courage we need to advance in society when we are a woman,” says Laetitia Colombani.

Three stories to tell

When moving from the novel to writing a screenplay, one of the big challenges for Laetitia Colombani was to maintain the fluidity in the story that allows you to navigate between three stories without getting lost. An asset of his novel to encourage this exercise: its cinematographic side. “I have a background in film school, I think a lot in terms of images and that affected the way I wrote the novel, I was already visualizing it in scenes,” explains the filmmaker.

The adaptation work was not the easiest. It took a year of writing to arrive at the final result, with the help of author and screenwriter Sarah Kaminsky, with whom she works on all her screenplays. “I make her read my novels and all my scripts, and there, I really needed her to have some perspective,” says Laetitia Colombani. It gave me the possibility of deviating a little from the book, in the Italian part in particular, to be able to go further into the issues of the story in the scenario. I was able to come back to my work, deepen it and improve it. »

To play her Smita, her Sarah and her Giulia, Laetitia Colombani says she went through an “extremely simple” casting process. ” I did not choose [les actrices]I recognized them,” she says, with a smile on her lips.

Filming then lasted six months, an intense marathon, spent two months first in India, then in Montreal and finally in Italy. She and her team “always had to be one step ahead,” meaning planning the next shoot at the same time as they were capturing footage in a given country.

Without being easy, the making of The braid was an exceptional experience for Laetitia Colombani. This story never ceases to give them access to moments that they would not have thought they would experience while writing the book. Because her daughter was a child when the novel came out, she had the idea of ​​making it into an illustrated book for younger children. She won awards and traveled thanks to the novel. NOW, The braide takes off on the big screen. The film is a great success in France and is arriving these days on our side of the Atlantic. The story of the shooting is also recorded in a book, published by Grasset, in which the filmmaker recounts the months that led to the film.

“There was nothing planned, everything was a happy succession of events,” Laetitia Colombani tells us. The braid, a universal series of stories, has reached the public in all its forms. For the filmmaker and author, it is the result of a “little magic”, which extends beyond what she could have dreamed of.

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