Marie-Josée Croze

In the speech-therapy scenes of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), Marie-Josée Croze gives the practical work her full attention. As Henriette Durand, she is restrained and physically precise, making the effort of helping someone communicate absorbing without pressing us to find it moving. We were moved, because her concentration lets us feel how much that work matters. Julian Schnabel occasionally gets too absorbed in beautiful images, a reservation we have about a film we otherwise recommend warmly. Croze gives us a good reason to keep looking at the person in the frame.

The leading role of Bibiane Champagne in Denis Villeneuve’s Maelström (2000) brought national recognition; The Barbarian Invasions (2003), in which she plays Nathalie, established her internationally. The latter makes particular use of her ability to play damaged people without reducing them to their troubles. French and European cinema then became a substantial part of her working life, alongside Canadian and English-language projects. Margot Beck in Tell No One (2006) belongs to that French phase. She is often cast as reserved, inward-looking people, and her useful skill is making small emotional changes clear without enlarging them.

The reservation is that supporting parts do not always give her enough time for those changes to register, and quiet acting cannot solve a shortage of material. Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005), in which she plays Jeanette, is an example of a larger ensemble film that gives her limited screen time. Schnabel’s speech-therapy scenes are more useful for understanding what she does: the physical precision serves a clear task, rather than becoming something to admire for its own sake. She does not need a larger gesture there, because the work already holds our attention. Start with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and give the therapist as much attention as the beautiful images.