'The Braid': A powerful tale of three women across cultures struggling with crisis - review

The Braid is a movie that just opened in theaters around Israel. It tells three stories of women in times of crisis in very different settings around the world who are ultimately connected through the titular braid.

Each story is compelling on its own – one is set in rural India, the second is in a small coastal Italian town, and the third is in Montreal – and the format works well in that you become very aware of the differences between each society portrayed. Each story is well-paced, and none completely overshadows the others, although some hit harder. At times, it felt like each was being hurried along to the conclusion, where they connect, and that scenes that might have deepened each of the characters had to be left out.

That said, there is much to like in each story, and the director and co-screenwriter, Laetitia Colombani, who wrote the film with Sarah Kaminsksy, makes the case that all these women are deserving of our attention, whether they are privileged, poor, or somewhere in between. It has a social agenda in that it spotlights injustices in different societies. Still, it also makes points about women’s emotional lives and how the similarities in their inner lives are universal.

Each story is told in 10-minute chunks, one following the other, and it starts out with Smita (Mia Maelzer), who is from the Dalit or untouchable caste. She and her husband (Nehpal Gautam) and daughter (Sajda Pathan) live in a village where they face institutionalized discrimination so severe that it is hard to absorb or describe. They work by scavenging what they can and cleaning certain parts of the village. Their main source of protein is, as we learn, it was for their forefather's rats that they caught in the fields.

Smita is suffering from a respiratory illness, and they have saved money for an X-ray, but Smita insists on spending it on sending her daughter to school, where the Brahmin who is in charge is known for accepting untouchables. But it turns out that even in the classroom, anyone from their caste faces unspeakable cruelty and discrimination. This leads Smita to despair and forces her to weigh whether the family should leave the area for another region where they might fare better, although, according to her husband, they are not legally permitted to leave, and those who have tried have been murdered. 

The second story is set in what looks like the most beautiful small town in the world, a coastal village in the south of Italy. Giulia (Fotini Peluso) helps her father run a workshop that has been in the family for decades. It employs many of the town’s women and does things the old-fashioned way. A bookworm who spends her lunch hours in the library, Giulia cares so much about keeping the workshop running that she focuses on it rather than going to university or developing her social life. But when she meets Kamal (Avi Nash), a young Sikh man who has moved to the area, she is intrigued by him. At the same time, she has to figure out how to deal with a severe financial problem in the family business. 

Three women struggling with crisis

The most familiar story is that of Sarah (Kim Raver of 24 and Grey’s Anatomy), a workaholic divorced lawyer with three kids she has trouble making time for. She is stressed and lonely, and when a crisis comes up in her family, she feels she has to hide or minimize it for everyone around her, which makes her feel even lonelier. 

The main actresses are all lovely and make the characters so compelling you will overlook some of the plot contrivances that eventually connect them.

The main problem the movie has is getting us to focus on Sarah’s problems after we have seen the horrific poverty, injustice, and danger that Smita and her daughter face every minute of the day. These scenes reminded me a bit of Lion, the movie about an Indian boy who gets separated from his parents and is adopted by a family abroad.

Both films show the grinding poverty and disorder of India, a place where there is no safety net. The Indian and Italian stories are filmed in especially gorgeous colors, and the Indian countryside is a pretty backdrop to Smita’s grim life, but her story is still so sad that it can be hard to reset your focus on the problems, real as they are, of a successful lawyer.

The Italian sequences, which are exotic enough to distract a little from Smita’s misery, generally work well as a bridge between rural India and Montreal, but it’s still challenging to get us to care equally about all the storylines. 

Still, The Braid is an ambitious and engaging film about three strong women. I imagine, though, that when I think back on it months from now, the Indian story is what I will remember most vividly.