She comes to stay with her sister Lea (Elsa Zylberstein) and her brother-in-law Luc (Serge Hazanavicius) (Luc and Lea? Tell me that's not a force.) and their two adopted children. Also in the house is Luc's father Paul (Jean-Claude Arnaud) who has been rendered mute by a stroke. He is easily my favorite character, quietly stealing scenes in the background without a word.Lea is riddled with guilt at not staying in contact with Juliette during her prison stay. She tries very hard to prove her love and reconnect with the sister her parents had come to pretend didn't exist. Simultaneously she has to try and protect Juliette from Luc's great distrust. Zylberstein does a wonderful job with her character, more than holding her own opposite Thomas's masterful work.
Thomas starts very controlled, walling herself off from the world. At the beginning of the movie she has been physically released from prison but mentally she's still in there. Her mind is a prison of her own making. She slowly starts to creep out from behind that wall and peek around, making tentative steps toward reclaiming a life of her own. Along the way she runs into continual barriers in the form of people who won't trust her or be around her because of what she has done. She seems to make a connection with her parole officer, Captain Fauré (Frédéric Pierrot). He alone seems not to judge her. Or perhaps he's just too lonely to care. But all along, Thomas portrays a woman nursing wounds so bad that it seems she's either going to collapse in on herself or snap on someone else. She has little flashes of warmth or humor along the way, signalling her character's progress. And eventually all that bottled emotion explodes out in a searingly raw moment that causes the entire audience to simultaneously stop breathing.
The pace of the film is deliberately slow. It paces itself alongside Juliette's slowly warming manner. This is necessary in that it gives Thomas the time and space she needs to fully unravel her carefully built performance. It is also the picture's weakness as it gives things an overly calculated feel. Somehow the movie seems to float in space, isolated from the world. It has a small universe of characters which makes it feel disconnected from anything. Everything seems to exist to advance the plot, to carefully unfold mysteries, and of course give Thomas the full space she needs to work.
Particularly frustrating about this movie is that it works best the less you know. Just reading the blurb about the film in the FilmColumbia festival's program gave me too much, killing surprise and providing enough information to make good guesses about the plot before the movie got there first. The plot is a house of cards that collapses under just a little bit of information. It ends up taking away from some brilliant acting. It's worth a watch for that acting but don't be surprised if it fails to surprise you.
