In the past few days I’ve seen two French films, both starring Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi. She’s not an actress to whom I’ve paid much attention in the past, but in these films—Actrices and Le Grand Alibi, Bruni-Tedeschi played such entirely different characters, and so convincingly, that I became utterly captivated. How anyone can go and see anything like Bride Wars, when there is other, so much more sustaining cinematic fare, I do not know.

Actrices is about a lonely actress Marcelline in her forties, thinking she might be about to experience the end of her fertility, and lose the chance of having a child. This drama is played out side by side, or on top of, really, the other literal drama of her playing the role of Natalya in Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, a woman who manipulates others to get what she wants.

Le Grand Alibi is a retelling of an Agatha Christie story, and much less psychologically complex than Actrices, but satisfying also in its own way, especially if one likes thrillers.

And of course there is the added frisson of knowing that Valeria is the elder sister of Carla, France’s first lady.