I've Loved You So Long - Review

Director: Philippe Claudel
Writer: Philippe Claudel
Starring: Kristin Scott Thomas
Runtime: 117 minutes
French with subtitles

This movie is the very definition of "character study," and it probably would never have been filmed in Hollywood. Made in France, I've Loved You So Long breaks a lot of the rules reserved for "gripping emotional drama." There are no ups and downs, no twists, no subplots, no shifts in tone. The movie is an emotional straight line from beginning to end, neither extremely dark or blissful.

A movie like that is very hard to keep interesting, especially when it runs close to two hours. I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime in French) somehow overcomes this problem. It's a satisfying film, with a good cast and a brave script.

Kristin Scott Thomas plays Juliette Fontaine, a woman just released from prison for the crime of...something. We don't know what. Since she's been away for a long time, we know that it must have been a heinous act. As one character says in the film, "15 years? What did you do, kill somebody?" The days of Les Mis and being locked up for an eternity for stealing bread are long gone. If you get put away for fifteen years these days, you really did something.

Juliette's sister Lea (Elsa Zylberstein) picks Juliette up from prison and takes her home to live with Lea's family. Lea's husband Luc (Serge Hazanavicius) doesn't want her there, and especially doesn't want her around his kids. Naturally enough, he wants to know when she's going to get a place of her own. Lea says it will happen when it happens, but that she wants to get to know her sister. Not get to know her again, but get to know her in the first place: she never visited Juliette in prison, and in fact was forbidden to by their parents.

Juliette knows no one from her past. Every face she's seen for the past 15 years has belonged to a prisoner or a guard. Her family disowned her. No one visited and no one wrote. She is starting her life over, this time as an ex-con. And, thanks to a good script and director, this movie bears no resemblance to Rachel Getting Married or any other sanctimonious "poor-me-just-out-of-prison" nonsense.

The film has no real plot. The question of what crime Juliette committed is the Hitchcockian (Hitchcockesque?) McGuffin in the film. It motivates some of the characters and adds to audience interest, but it isn't critical to the story. Plot is an afterthought. Instead, the film shows this woman adapting to real life and learning how to live again, but without the usual preachy scenes of, "You don't know what it's like on the inside," or, "Nobody loves me anymore." One great line in the movie is when Lea calls prison "inside," and Juliette says, "Would you stop calling it 'inside?' It's called prison."

As I said, this movie doesn't get made in Hollywood. Take one scene where Juliette becomes trusted enough to look after Luc and Lea's kids for the night. In Hollywood, Juliette would abuse this trust by allowing the kids to wander into the street, or dropping a curling iron on their arm, or carelessly allowing one of them to fall down a flight of stairs. At that moment, Luc or Lea would walk in the front door and say, "Ah ha! We knew we shouldn't have trusted you. How could you let this happen to our daughter?" Then the screaming would begin, or the obligatory scene where Juliette realizes they're right, she is worthless, and goes outside to hug herself and cry.

That's Hollywood. In this movie, Juliette puts the kids to sleep. She sits down on the couch and nods off. Lea comes home. Juliette wakes up and they say hello. And that's that.

So what's the movie about? Search me. It's just the story of a woman who gets out of prison and starts to live her life again. It walks a fine line between interest and boredom and I think it pulls it off. The ending won't stun you because you'll see it coming a pretty long way off. In fact, you might consider it a cop out, and I wouldn't blame you. But I don't think it matters much. Juliette is the point of the whole thing, and Kristin Scott Thomas makes watching her worthwhile.

The cast helps because they're excellent, and the script helps as it's refreshing not to be treated to Obligatory Scenes. Juliette isn't hooked on dope, she doesn't blame anyone else but herself for her problems, she doesn't spend half the movie crying, and there isn't one flashback scene in the whole film.

Incredible. And satisfying.

Photos: Rotten Tomatoes