‘I’ve Loved You So Long’ artfully evokes emotion

Film review: Loving the human "I've Loved You So Long"

When we first see Kristin Scott Thomas in "I've Loved You So Long," she is bone-weary and emotionally damaged.

In movies, there are only two directions a character like that can take. Either she will work her way through her problems and find a form of redemption, or her situation will deteriorate further until it becomes intolerable.

The joy of "I've Loved You So Long" is in seeing the impeccable craftsmanship with which this arc is shown.

This French film (the title comes from a charming song) expertly doles out information in droplets, allowing us to absorb each one, ponder it and see how it contributes to what we know of the whole.

For instance, in the initial scene, Scott Thomas' haggard character Juliette is picked up by, and taken to the house of, Elsa Zylberstein. It is only after a few scenes that we learn of their relationship -- they are sisters who apparently haven't seen each other in a long time.

But that only raises more questions: Why haven't they spoken in so long? Where has Juliette been?

It soon becomes clear that she has been in prison. And this information inevitably leads to the big questions. What did she do, and why?

These are not answered for some time, a guaranteed way of grabbing the audience's attention.

There is only one problem with this setup, and it can't be helped: Scott Thomas is far too beautiful to look as if she has spent 15 years in prison. Her inherent sophistication, however, works well for the character of Juliette, both making her incarceration more of a shock and helping to explain her crime.

Scott Thomas is absolutely brilliant in the role, expressing everything with her eyes, her silences and her rare flashes of anger.

Writer Philippe Claudel, who also directs, takes care to populate his film with intriguing minor characters apart from the two sisters. A complex and fully drawn parole officer, perhaps unique in the annals of such characters in movies, spends more time complaining about his life than asking Juliette about hers. A literature professor looks at life through books. An employer calls her in for a discussion that takes an unexpected turn. A drunken French intellectual is pompous -- even for drunken French intellectuals.

"I've Loved You So Long" is sensitive and evocative, anchored by a tour de force performance and graced with an understanding of humanity in all its states. It may be sad at points, happy at others, but it is never less than fascinating and completely real.

Contact Daniel Neman at or (804) 649-6408.

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