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Wednesday, April 29, 2015

The Grand Seduction (2014)

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This is a remake of a French Canadian movie, the subtitled version of which was called Seducing Dr. Lewis from 2003.  The setting is a small rural harbor that is accessible only by ferry.  There is limited internet access and no cell phones.  Fishing has been so highly regulated that they can no longer sustain a living there, but they are not ready to abandon their community.  So instead they live on welfare, and over time that doesn’t go well for them.

Murray is a leader in Tickle Head.  He is unmotivated to change up until the point where his wife moves out.  She is tired of the culture of being on the dole, and while she lives the community, she needs to earn her keep.  At that point Murray becomes very interested in bringing a factory to the community so they have a source of income.  The barrier is that they need a doctor.  How to get someone to come?  They strong arm a physician into coming for a month, and they have to woo him to stay long term.  The problem is two fold.  The first is that they come to like him as a person—so now they have lied to him and they can’t take it all back. 

There are several take home messages for me from this movie.  The first is just how difficult it is to recruit and retain health care providers in rural communities.  The harbor would have been well served to send one of their own to be an advanced practice nurse.  The second is that when you fool somebody, it makes it nearly impossible to develop a long term relationship with them.  There is a message that work has rewards beyond what you do, including sex, but I think that is less well supported than the other two.

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