I know... This isn't a very convincing theme, because all movies have turning-points, right? Fair argument. Still, it's a good enough way to tie together a few mini-reviews from the last few weeks.

1.
La Fille du Puisatier (The Well-Digger's Daughter)
2011, Daniel Auteuil

The life-changing turning-point: Finding you're expecting a baby while unmarried, to someone from outside your social milieu (at a time when both these factors really matter)

The plot: Based on a 1940 film directed by Marcel Pagnol, this is the story of Pascal, a widower with more daughers than he knows what to do with (and "knowing what to do with daughters" is pretty much the only angle he has on the female sex). The oldest, Patricia, who has spent time in Paris in a religious school, and has returned polished but still good-hearted, spurns the attention of Pascal's assistant, Felipe, and instead falls inappropriately in love with Jacques Mazel. The son of a solid, hardware-selling businessman and his irritating wife, Jacques is a pilot in the military, and is soon both called up and posted missing -- leaving the pregnant Patricia in the lurch. Loyal Felipe is still willing to take on the full package of mother-and-someone-else's-child; mere and pere Mazel, on the other hand, have no intention of helping out the lower classes. So Patricia is banished to have her baby in a place where there'll be less gossip. All the grandparents start to change their tune when junior is born. And Jacques miraculously returns, to claim his bride and his son. Felipe ends up marrying Patricia's sister, and you wonder, firstly, how the dynamics of that quadrilateral will work out in the future, and secondly, whether the sister actually has more chance of happiness than poor Patricia, stuck with that mother-in-law, and all that hardware...

Pluses: Provence... The sun, the golden landscape, the cute but impenetrable accent... And an amazing song: Core 'ngrato (lyrics by Riccardo Cordiferro, music by Salvatore Cardillo, sung by Enrico Caruso).

Minuses: I guess we're supposed to like Pascal, and understand that he's a product of his time, and weighed down by his responsibilities. But at the end of the day, the man is completely unreconstructed... He thinks Patricia is wonderful while she's helping out in the house, but as soon as she gets pregnant, he's all thunderbolts and meanness. He starts to come round again only when it turns out the child is a boy... And I guess we're supposed to like Jacques. But he pales into superficiality next to Felipe, who -- though much older and much duller -- is genuinely kind and generous, and more of a known quantity. Maybe I'm just not getting into the spirit of the thing. Or maybe Pagnol just needs to be read.


Southern France, 1990



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2.
Master Cheng
2019, Mika Kaurismaki

The life-changing turning-point: Going to Finland to repay a debt

The plot: Master Cheng, accompanied by his cellphone-addicted son, and missing his late wife, turns up in a small Finnish village, looking for someone no local has ever heard of. When a party of Chinese tourists rolls up, he helps Sirkka, the cafe-owner who has been kind to him, by cooking up some familiar dishes for the travellers. Soon the locals, too, are appreciating his flavours, and noticing that their health has improved... It turns out Cheng has been mangling the name of a Finn who helped him out financially when he was at a low ebb. The benefactor has already passed away, so it is too late for the chef to carry out his resolve to pay him back, but the attempt to do so has providentially opened up a new life for Sirkka, Cheng, and the son.

Pluses: Sometimes you need a "nice", undemanding movie like this one (the local people are curious about Cheng, but not hostile; they're willing to taste and welcome new food; they're kind to each other -- it's not necessarily realistic, but it's refreshing). And the filming -- of food and of Finland -- is beautiful.

Minuses: Just a tad too reminiscent of Chocolat, or The Mistress of Spices.





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3.
The Big Picture
2010, Eric Lartigau

The life-changing turning-point: Killing the guy who is having an affair with your wife, and taking on his identity...

The plot: In the original French this is called L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie (The Man who Wanted To Live his Life). And certainly, swirling around the opening of this movie is an awful lot of discontent about how lives are being led. Paul Exben, a lawyer, who stands to inherit the firm he works for from his dying boss, actually wants to be a photographer. Sarah, his wife, wants to be a writer, and feels she has had little support from her husband. (In fact, neither of them excels at confidence-building.) And she's way too close to their neighbour, Greg, who IS a photographer, albeit not a very successful one. (Paul, after much suspicion, eventually identifies the object of Sarah's affections on account of a bottle of Cloudy Bay -- which they all pronounce "Cloody Bay". It's nice to see a great New Zealand wine starring in a French film.) Anyway, Paul confronts Greg, and in the resulting scuffle, accidentally kills him. Rather than 'fess up, he sets up an elaborate scenario to persuade everyone that he, Paul, has died in a boating accident, while assuming Greg's identity to follow up a photography assignment in eastern Europe -- where he finds his photographic feet. But of course it's never that easy to leave yourself behind... Having always doubted himself, Paul can't break the habit. So he flees again, this time aboard a freighter, from which he is ejected for filming the summary treatment of two stowaways. At least he and his companion happen upon a survival raft...

Pluses: It's not really a thriller, but it's quite gripping.

Minuses: I didn't end up really liking any of the characters, which always makes it a little hard to invest in a movie. The plot also strains credulity a little, especially in an age when everyone's photo is everywhere. And what are we supposed to make of that weird ending...?



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4.
Made in Dagenham
2010, Nigel Cole

The life-changing turning-point: Deciding not to put up with unequal pay

The plot: It's 1968, and the management of the Ford plant in Dagenham, UK, announces that the female machinists, who sew complex car-seat covers, without even a template to follow, will be classified as unskilled workers. A group of women, aided by Albert, one of the union reps, decide they're not going to put up with such egregious injustice, and go on strike (according to this source, Ford had three pay rates for males -- skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled -- and one rate for women, which was 87% of the unskilled male rate...). The women face an array of opponents -- not just the Ford top brass, but employer-coopted members of their own union, and male colleagues, who -- once the going gets tough, and the men's work starts to be affected -- resist and denigrate their efforts. But they persevere. They get the backing of Barbara Castle, no less, and they are instrumental not only in bringing about better conditions for themselves, but in paving the way for the Equal Pay Act of 1970. It's not entirely accurate, but the broad-brush outline is based on actual events.

Pluses: It's a rousing story, and those sixties fashions make for great shots.

Minuses: I think this critic is being a little unfair (by presenting "a hackneyed set of Brit-film female stereotypes", the movie ends up being "patronizing to women"...). It is supposed to be entertainment, after all... But I definitely see where he's coming from. By making the key women younger than the actual protagonists, by "borrowing" from other strike action footage, and by out-and-out inventing details, the film-makers have obviously chosen to depart from what specifically happened at Dagenham, in order to create a more generic (and flamboyant) "strike story".





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5.
Siddharth
2013, Richie Mehta

The life-changing turning-point: Letting your 12-year-old son go away to work

The plot: Mahendra and his wife, Suman, live from hand to mouth in their small home in Delhi. He works as a "chain-wallah" (an ambulant zipper-fixer), and also takes sewing shifts when they're available. But there's never enough money, it seems, by the time all the bills have been paid. So when an opportunity arises for their son, Siddharth, to go away to work in a trolley factory (for a distant contact of a relative), Mahendra sees no reason to refuse (even though such employment is illegal). Siddharth is due to return for Divali, and when he doesn't, the lives of the parents and their other child, a savvy little girl, are turned upside down. When all the normal investigative avenues fail, Mahendra embarks on a quest to find his son. This makes finding a needle in a haystack look easy by comparison, and tragically, he is not successful. (See here for the Canadian film-maker's very moving account of the encounter that inspired the movie.)

Pluses: The ending... Heart-rending, but any other resolution would have felt forced and artificial. And it was beautifully filmed. The imagery is far from projecting a rose-tinted view of India, but even the most dismal shots are arresting. Although all the classic Indian stereotypes are dished up here (poverty, exploitation, the sheer enormity of the population, which makes it hard for any system to function...), this is counter-balanced by the fact that we meet very few "bad" people (on the contrary, Mahendra encounters a lot of kindness on his journey, albeit often from people who are jaded by the massive scale of the problems they face).

Minuses: We surmised this film was made primarily with an international audience in mind (at any rate, I haven't been able to find any reviews in Indian newspapers). Not a problem per se, but you always wonder how these things go down in the country where they are filmed.



Interesting side-question: If you were making a film of your life, which turning-point would you focus on...? Hmmm...