Kristin Scott Thomas is fluent in French, lives in Paris, sees herself as French and has a thriving French film career. Who knew?

Her last two French films received critical praise. I’ve Loved You So Long (in which she plays the lead) and Tell No One are out on DVD and a must see!

I’ve Loved You So Long (2008)

www.rottentomatoes.com rating 96%.

French with subtitles.

For her lead role as a woman released from prison after 15 years, the captivating Kristin Scott Thomas figured she didn’t need to visit prisons or speak to female prisoners. She opted for going on instinct.

Whoohoo for us! Her portrayal of Juliette, a woman who has been locked up for most of her adult life, is beautifully contained. No dramatics, no Oscar driven performance.

As Juliette has very little dialogue in this film, Scott Thomas reverted to facial expressions, posture and movement to perfectly capture a fragile, disorientated woman, who simply wants to disappear, a woman with a secret. The way she chain smokes, orders a drink at a bar or merely widens her eyes, all adds to a performance that Kristen Scott Thomas ‘did not want people to particularly like’.

Scott Thomas also wore no makeup. She said in an interview that she was quite offended that the director thought he had to ask her if she would be willing to go without it. To her it was a given that Juliette needed to look like someone who did not want to stand out and we all know the beautiful Kristen normally stands out in films. As she does in ‘Tell No One’.

The film starts with Lea (Elsa Zylberstein) picking up her older sister, Juliette, at the airport after serving her prison sentence for murder. She opens up her life and home to Juliette and supports her in finding a job and slowly reentering the world.

Lea has blind faith in her older sister and her unconditional love and support for Juliette is crucial to the plot of the film. It could be Juliette’s salvation.

In an interview KST commented on the fact that Elsa did not grow up with sisters and therefore approached this film with a romantic idea of sisterhood. That added to her portrayal of Léa’s childlike faith in Juliette.

First time director, Guillaume Canet, used ‘painting’ as a theme. There are obvious references such as Juliette visiting a gallery and being drawn to a painting of women weeping at the side of an open grave. The less obvious are the paintings Canet ‘creates’ by shooting dimly lit intimate, quiet paintings made possible through lighting techniques and camera angles.

Look out for two scenes. 1) Where SKT sits in her room smoking and staring out of her window and 2) where SKT has fallen asleep in the chair next to the mute father in law.

Canet has created a compellingly quiet film. Although ‘I’ve loved you so long’ deals with a weighty subject, there is a message of hope and salvation in this film that audiences worldwide have responded to.

Tell No One (2008)

www.rottentomatoes.com rating 96%.

French with subtitles.

Tell No One is one of those rare creatures; an intelligent suspense thriller that is as emotionally haunting as it is thrilling. It surprised both its creators and cast with the commercial success it achieved.

What makes Tell No One emotionally haunting are the deeply human characters, beautiful camera work and attention to detail.

The love relationship between paediatrician Alex Beck (Francois Cluzet) and his wife is depicted in a way that only the French can do; the naked lovers lying on a moonlit dock, the childhood flashbacks of carving their initials in a tree and the flowers used throughout the film.

The friendship between Alex and Hélène (Kristin Scott-Thomas), his sister’s wife, is authentic and endearing. She stands by him, even when his sister fails. Another refreshing element is that the gay relationship is not an issue at all. Hélène just happens to be a woman.

A lot of care went into putting this film together. I had to watch it twice to pick up on Hélène fidgeting with her hands because she has given up smoking, the number of years Alex and Margo had been together carved below their initials, the flowers that is delivered later during the film is a clue to where Alex will meet Margo and the obsessive compulsive behaviour of the inspector who double checks that the gas on the gas stove is indeed switched off.

The suspense keeps you on the edge of your couch. The myriad of twists and turns are unexpected but completely plausible and interlinked. All the facts do add up even though you struggle to comprehend the magnitude of what is going down while you watch the film. The action is restricted to superbly shot running sequences, hiding in trash cans and one quite powerful scene where Alex crosses a highway during peak traffic.

What stayed with me after watching Tell No One were not the action sequences or the complex plot, but the love story, the friendship and the lengths parents would to go to protect their children.