Film

The women-in-prison film has a long and glorious tawdry history; what’s more difficult to pull off is the story of a lady sprung. In his helming debut, director-screenwriter Philippe Claudel, a novelist and professor of literature, crafts a solid woman’s picture that, as an obvious but no less pleasurable star vehicle for Kristin Scott Thomas, suggests a kinship with Warner Bros. weepies from the 1940s.

First seen rather conspicuously without makeup, her skin color resembling three-day-old institutional grub, Scott Thomas plays Juliette Fontaine, a former physician who’s just completed a 15-year jail sentence for murder. Her younger sister, lit prof Léa (Zylberstein), takes her in, anxiously trying not to upend the snug comfort of her middle-class clan with this new addition. Though Juliette’s reacclimation to civilian life takes predictable turns, what’s more surprising is Scott Thomas’s slow thaw, punctuated by believably spiky outbursts. Her role nearly screams “awards bait,” but Scott Thomas is a deft enough performer not to outact Zylberstein. The film isn’t without histrionics: Léa loses it during a seminar discussion about Raskolnikov, and a final-act revelation borders on the implausible. Then again, a woman’s film is only as good as its melodramatic excess.