THE BRAID

Laetitia Colombani’s assured adaptation of her own best-selling novel weaves together three stories of female struggle and perseverance across three continents. Smita (Mia Maelzer) is an Indian “untouchable”, literally shovelling human excrement. In Puglia, Italy, Giulia (Fotina Puluso) is a confident, bookish young woman trying to keep her father’s wig business afloat after he goes into a coma. At the other end of the social spectrum in Montreal, Sarah (Kim Raver) is a successful lawyer on the verge of a senior partnership, trying to cover up an ill-timed cancer diagnosis. Colombani cuts between these three determined, sometimes reckless women, tracking echoes and parallels as well as the obvious contrasts between their levels of affluence, while moving towards an emotional finale.