Most critics like it, and nearly all of them like it for the same reason: Kristin Scott Thomas. Review after review names her performance first, praising its restraint, its quiet weight and the flashes of dry wit underneath. Philippe Claudel’s direction is credited with keeping the drama understated and credible, so the family tensions build without being forced, and most reviews find the result moving.
The reservations are about the writing, not the acting. Slant finds the script didactic and the pacing uneven; The New Yorker thinks the film withholds too much about Juliette’s crime; Empire, otherwise warm, calls the final scene a wrong note. The spread is wide for a film this well liked. Only Paste comes out against it, arguing that the film piles on suffering without reaching any catharsis, though even that review admires Scott Thomas.