Widow of St. Pierre, The

Patrice Leconte’s provocative romantic melodrama about redemption, unconditional love and the tragic fallout of uncompromised principles is based with rather detached emotion on a true story. On the island of Saint Pierre, a rural French territory off the coast of Newfoundland, the wife (Chocolat‘s Juliette Binoche) of the military commandant (Girl on the Bridge's knife-throwing Daniel Auteuil) causes a scandal by befriending a fisherman (Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica) convicted of murder. She makes the man her protégé while awaiting a guillotine and executioner to be shipped from overseas. The condemned man’s subsequent good deeds and heroics endear him to the community but local bureaucrats are determined to punish both him and his supporters.