Scott Thomas is at her finest

In

I've Loved You So Long

, Kristin Scott Thomas gives a performance that is so chilling, so braced in pain that it's almost impossible to bear.

Almost

impossible, because, in fact, it's impossible

not

to behold this riveting piece of role immersion in a story that's sad, stark and redemptive.

Written and directed by French novelist Philippe Claudel, I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime) offers up the portrait of Juliette (Scott Thomas), a middle-aged woman returning into society after a long stretch in prison. Her younger and estranged sister, Lea (Elsa Zylberstein) - the two look remarkably like siblings - meets her at the airport. Lea offers her house, which she shares with her husband, her near-senile father, and the couple's two adopted Vietnamese daughters, for Juliette to live in as she puts her life together again.

Claudel takes his time letting us know why Juliette was in jail, but as the terrible details unfold, we can see the reasons that Juliette - hunched, wary, silent, chain-smoking - is unwilling and unable to let people in. Set in a fittingly drab French provincial city, I've Loved You So Long is in essence a melodrama, but one of exacting emotional truth. The tears, when they come, are rivers.

Scott Thomas is probably best known to audiences for the frosty, stalwart Brits she has played in big dramas (The English Patient) and jaunty romantic comedies (Four Weddings and a Funeral). A longtime resident of Paris, Scott Thomas has pursued a parallel career in French cinema over the last decade. But nothing she has done, neither in English nor French, has the heft and haunting resonance of her portrayal here.

And although this is unquestionably her movie, Scott Thomas is not alone: Zylberstein, as the sister, grown up and teaching literature at a local college, brings a palpable sense of guilt and longing to the proceedings, and Laurent Grévill, as a friend and fellow professor who takes an interest in Juliette, seems to be the only soul who understands the agony she has endured. You find yourself rooting for him, hoping he can break through and grab hold of Juliette's soul.

This may be Claudel's first directing job, but he clearly understands how to draw characters, and how to draw us into their world. Full of rapt stillnesses and cool, controlled shots - all the better to capture Juliette's psychic and spiritual struggles - this is a picture of quiet observation, contained emotion, the hush before the cathartic scream.

Hopefully, there will be history made when the Oscar nominations roll around in early 2009: For the second year in a row (after Marion Cotillard's Academy Award-winning turn as Edith Piaf) a French-language film could garner a best-actress nod. Scott Thomas deserves it.

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