The name Mary Heurtin is as recognizable in France as Helen Keller’s is in America. (Heurtin was born in 1885, blind and deaf, five years after Keller.) Two-thirds of Marie’s Story is fundamentally a subtitled reiteration of similar material covered in the stage and movie hit The Miracle Worker, only this time the characters get to spend more sunlit hours outside studio walls. For a long spell, all efforts to remove the child from her world fail, and it’s only with supreme patience that Marie’s answer to Annie Sullivan, Sister Marguerite (Isabelle Carré), is able to succeed. Then tragedy strikes and what began as an engaging, handsomely realized drama, garnished by bites of unexpected bites of humor, cheapens into carelessly manipulative melodrama. Still, there’s a solid hour to hold you, which is more than can be said for most nowadays. Directed and co-written by Jean-Pierre Améris and featuring Ariana Rivoire as Marie. (2015) — Scott Marks
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