Directed by Philippe Claudel

Juliette (Kristin Scott-Thomas) is returning to her sister Lea (Elsa Zylberstein)'s home after 15 years of absence. The emotions between them are awkward: unconditional love on Lea's part, disengagement and a degree of resentment on Juliette's. It would not be a spoiler, as it soon emerges in the film, to reveal that Juliette has been in prison. "15 years? Must be something big": a prospective employer puts into words what we are all thinking. Scott-Thomas is as good as she's ever been. That well-bred bone structure looks hard and even coarse, and boy can she wield a cigarette. She's shown over the years how well she can do iciness, but it's usually been the crystal-sharp kind - here her iciness is more like a frozen puddle, full of all manner of darkness and sharp unknown things.

Slowly she begins to warm back to life, like a reluctant cold hand being held, with the help of her loyal sister and her family and friends. As she does, and begins to develop relationships and a normal life, the secret of what the big thing she did was gradually surfaces. Around this enigma is a slow-burning, extremely satisfying portrait of sisterhood, loyalty, the warmth of family life. A striking performance too from Elsa Zylberstein who manages to make well-intentioned Lea's sisterly love believable and never oversweet, and Frederic Pierrot does a good job as Juliette's fidgety, unhappy policeman contact. Inevitably, this being a French film, there's a scene around the dinner table, but here the usual bonding feel is reversed to show how much on a knife-edge Juliette's secret holds her.

A pity then that the denouement which we have all been waiting for, the truth about Juliette's crime, somehow has a bogus feel, more unlikely the more you think about it, making a rather conventionally tidy ending, and sadly undermining the subtlety of what had gone before.

Seen at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, September 17 2008