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I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG (2008)

December 16th 2008 06:12

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I've Loved You So Long Kirstin Scott Thomas

The French are masters at capturing everyday drama - after all it was Stendhal who said that a novel is “a mirror carried along a high road.” I’ve Loved You So Long, named after a line in a song, is just such a thought-provoking, closely observed and emotionally intense everyday drama, a debut feature directed by Philippe Claudel, an award-winning novelist no less (best known for Gray Souls/By a Slow River). The film, which was a success at the international film festival circuit and a box office hit in France, offers an immersive, intimate and rewarding experience as it traces the reconnection between two estranged sisters, Juliette (Kirstin Scott Thomas), who was released from prison after fifteen years, and a much younger Lea (Elsa Zylberstein), a literature professor at a local university in Nancy. Lea brings Juliette home, against her husband Luc’s (Serge Hazanavicius) wishes, to their two adopted daughters and a grandfather (great French theatre actor Jean-Claude Arnaud), who has lost his ability to speak after a stroke.

Elsa Zylberstein and Kirstin Scott Thomas as estranged sisters in I've Loved You So Long

Juliette’s gray face, chain smoking, a certain rawness and pervasive silence evoke the prison walls she still carries around with her. The directors’ focus lies on the perceptions she elicits from others, from prejudice, morbid curiosity, disbelief, commiseration and finally understanding – to show how we go about defining ourselves and others. Kirstin Scott Thomas (best known for The English Patient and Four Weddings and a Funeral), a French resident since she was 19, is a self-confessed director’s nightmare. During a preview screening in Sydney, Claudel admitted that that is indeed the case, but qualified that assessment as a “nice nightmare.” The struggle was worth it, as her performance is as extraordinary as it is controlled in each of its little nuances. Like a dead leaf slowly unfurling to come back to life from its grief, Juliette gradually opens up and colour returns to her cheeks.

Juliette finds an understanding soul in Michel - Kirstin Scott Thomas and Laurent Grévill in I've Loved You So Long

As an evocative, measured and compassionate study of human nature I’ve Loved You So Long seemingly sprang mature and fully formed onto the screen straight from the mind of its first time director. Claudel’s powerful gift for conveying distilled and often humorous observations of people and their self-imposed limitations can be traced to his long-term work as a teacher, and like his narrative stand in - Lea’s colleague Michel (Laurent Grévill) - he used to teach in prison and the concept of prison is the central metaphor in the film. Lea, traumatized by her sister’s sudden disappearance and her parents complete rejection of Juliette, is afraid to bear children – hence the incongruous presence of adopted Vietnamese girls in the family. Juliette’s mother is trapped by her confused memories, slowly consumed by Alzheimer’s disease. The grandfather’s disability on the other hand, is only an apparent handicap, transcended through compulsive reading and post-it notes, as his humility and benevolence paradoxically draw others to him. Claudel suggests that – as seen even in film’s poster – we tend to create such mind-made prisons for ourselves, made up of beliefs and behaviour patterns as a result of life’s tragedies which shape our lives, but then if we are willing, we can find a way to transcend them.

Review by Patricia Bieszk

© Copyright P. Bieszk 2008

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