Change of Fate

A woman is accused of murder. She is the wife of a wealthy man. The man she killed was a friend of the family. She says she was defending herself. She tells them the man attacked her. A lawyer takes the case. He believes she will be acquitted. But then a piece of paper turns up. The paper is a note the woman wrote. In it she asks the dead man to meet her. That document changes everything. The lawyer has trouble believing his client. The account comes from a story by Somerset Maugham. Events take place in a colonial city in the twenties. The woman is called Maria. Natalya Leble and Yuri Shlykov take the leads in Kira Muratova’s Soviet film of 1987.