In Your Hands.

Kristin Scott Thomas as captive Anne Cooper.

Kristin Scott Thomas proves yet again to be more suited to the complex roles that French cinema offer, for example Sarah's Key (2010), Leaving (2009) and of course the award winning I’ve Loved You So Long (2008) where she played a former doctor released from an 18 year prison sentence and attempts to put her life back together again while living with her younger sister and her family, a role which won her a Best Actress Award. The best we can offer of late is the overrated Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011) in which she was cast in a comedy role as Patricia Maxwell a fiery-mouthed Press Secretary that certainly did not stretch her acting ability’s.

Pio Marmai as captor Yen.

French director and writer Lola Doillon offers Scot Thomas another chance to prove she is one of the best actresses Britain has to offer. In the psychological drama In Your Hands (2010) she plays female surgeon Anne Cooper a lonely women who has dedicated most of her adult life to her career at the detriment of her social life, this divorced childless women lives alone in her Paris apartment. Doillon’s story revolves around the kidnapping and imprisonment of Cooper by Yann (Pio Marmai) another sad lonely human being whose wife is dead and his estranged daughter lives with her grandparents. He keeps her forcibly locked up in a room in his cellar with a mattress, a bucket and very little else. Over the course of the movie it is revealed why he has taken this action.

An intense relationship develops between captive and captor.

This intense two-handed relationship drama between two very diverse people who have been brought together by some unfortunate circumstances could easily have been adapted from a stage play as a great deal of the action takes place in the single basement room between captor and captive for most of it’s 81 minute running time. Bordering on the Stockholm syndrome phenomenon it’s a rather sad story about two very lonely people who have been hurt by life’s cruel consequences in a way that shapes their association. This is intelligent and stylish cinema with superb acting especially from Kristin Scot Thomas. Don’t miss the chance to see this powerful movie; it will be at the  Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre in September.