Kristin defrosted

Kristin Scott Thomas has a bee in her bonnet. Actually, she has several bees in her bonnet. It’s more like a beehive than a bonnet. ‘British cinema is at death’s door,’ she rages. ‘Funding is a real issue. But people just aren’t making the right decisions about what gets made.’

I’m speaking to her at her home in Paris, in theory to discuss her latest film, the French thriller Tell No One. But talking about French films has got us talking about British films and talking about British films gets her hopping mad.

It’s all to do with America. It’s so difficult to get financing for films in Britain, she explains, that film-makers have to go cap in hand to the United States. But projects given the green light in America are pale products. That is how our industry is ‘being bridled’, she tells me.

‘There always seems to be a renaissance,’ she sighs. ‘Like a phoenix, the British film industry keeps coming back. Every ten or 15 years, everyone says, “We’re off” — and we’re off for about a week. And then we die again. So it gets just a little bit depressing.’

Maybe, I suggest, we just can’t make good British films any more?

‘No, no, no,’ Scott Thomas snaps. ‘There are wonderful British films being made, there just aren’t enough of them because they don’t have the means to make them. I mean, why isn’t Stephen Frears churning one out all the time? His films are fantastic. As are Mike Leigh’s. There are lots of fantastic people who make great films in England. I just wish they were allowed to make more of them. That’s all. I’m not saying that there’s no talent in England. It’s just that everyone has to go to America — that’s where films get swallowed up.’