I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t’aime)
Philippe Claudel | France | 2008
115 min

Kristen Scott Thomas gives a sincerely moving performance as Juliette in I’ve loved you so long. When we first see her she is a mess – released from prison after fifteen years, we can only imagine for some terrible crime, she comes across as lost. The film very gradually reveals these details, and the effects that it has had over others in her life is apparent. Her sister Lea, now married and living with her husband, his mute father and their two adopted Vietnamese daughters, takes Juliet home, where she intends to stay till she can find a steady job and support herself. We find out there is a reason why Lea decided to adopt and never have her own children. This is how the film sustains our interest.

One of the films recurring themes, that people like Juliette, incarcerated and ostracized, are never allowed to integrate back into society, becomes the foundation on which entire scenes and situations are constructed. Everyone she meets wants to know about her past and she has to hide it or lie if people insist too much. Moving on becomes difficult, almost burdensome. Some scenes, especially a late night dinner where a friend of Lea plays a game where people need to guess where Juliette has been for 15 years, doesn’t feel natural, but this is a flaw perhaps of an overindulgent screenplay and a novice director, both of which are forgivable because of how flawless Kristen Scott is in them. What we find out in the course of the films is the precariousness and preciousness of life – and this is as solemn as the beauty of the French Canadian film, The Barbarian Invasions. In the hands of Kristen Scott, aided by first time director Philippe Claudel, also the writer, Juliette becomes a woman whose pain never dies. It is an earnest performance full of self hate, but there is drama and a compelling back-story that moves along till the very end, when, on the backbone of the suppressed emotions, it explodes with absolute truth and devastation.

The two sisters, now adult women, reconnect in a way that their childhood never allowed them to, owing to the heinous crime that Juliette was accused of. This follows a pattern that we are familiarized to from watching films such as You Can Count On Me, but without the self-destructive characters or the unnecessary narcissism of that film (it’s interesting to note that the titles of both these films imply an almost conversational monologue written in the first person). Do we find out what she did? Yes and it’s important not to know anything about the crime before seeing the film because it helps to weigh in on the complete magnitude of her act and its ripple effect. An effective drama buoyed by an excellent character study.