There’s a scene towards the end of the movie “The Turning Point” that features one of the best knock-down, drag-out fights I’ve ever seen.

And it’s between two women.

(Okay, guys, get your minds out of the gutter – this particular cat fight doesn’t involve bikini-clad women wrestling in mud or anything like that.  Sorry.)

Deedee (Shirley Maclaine) and Emma (Anne Bancroft) are ballerinas.  When Deedee gets pregnant, she gives up her dancing career to raise her daughter and opens a ballet studio with her husband.  Emma remains single and childless and goes on to become the American Ballet Company’s prima ballerina.

The friends reunite years later when Emma comes to town for a performance with her ballet company.  Deedee’s daughter Emilia, now a fledgling dancer, goes to New York to stay with Emma and joins the ballet troupe.  Soon old resentments bubble to the surface as Deedee and Emma clash over their career choices and the very different lives each ended up with.

On the night of Emilia’s New York dancing debut, rivalries, jealousies, and long-buried resentments erupt as the two women confront one another on the roof of the theatre.  The difficult choices and sacrifices Emma and Deedee made over the years have brought them to this moment, this turning point.  Each woman desperately wants what the other has.

Purses are involved.

Midway through beating each other senseless with their handbags, the two women realize how ridiculous they must look.  They start to laugh.  Soon they collapse against each other, helpless with mirth, their anger gone.  It’s a wonderful, catharthic moment.

Emma and Deedee realize they stand united in one thing – their shared love of Emilia and their desire to see her find success as a dancer and, more importantly, happiness as a young woman.

That is good conflict.  Two people, each with a lot at stake, equally determined to get what they want, no matter the cost – leading to a final, fight-to-the-death confrontation.

Purses, of course, are optional.