Review—I've Loved You So Long
Kristin Scott Thomas Stars in Director Philippe Claudel's First Feature
Jun 10, 2009
Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a former physician who has just been released from prison after serving a fifteen-year sentence for the murder of her six-year-old son Pierre. Her best opportunity for getting her life back on track is to move in temporarily with her sister Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) and her family. As Juliette begins anew in the small town of Nancy where Léa teaches literature at a university, the sisters become reacquainted and strive to bring closure to their severed familial history.
Claudel, a veteran novelist of over a dozen titles, tells Juliette's story with notable simplicity and sensitivity. He doesn't try to bait his audience with shocking details of Juliette's deed or attempt to maintain our attention with superficial thrills and suspense. Instead, the film is wholly focused on Juliette's inner world, finely tuned to her gradual yet successful emergence from a very hurt and frightening place.
Parent-Child Relationships
"The worst prison is the death of one's child," Juliette proclaims to Léa following her confession of the true facts surrounding Pierre's death. She didn't kill him in cold blood like everyone thinks, but administered him a lethal dose of various medications after having completed a series of tests and discovered he was terminally ill. Her point is that because she could not bear to allow him to suffer, she sacrificed her own life by taking his.
Juliette's statement is ironic, given that her own parents disowned her once she was found guilty, telling new friends and acquaintances that Léa was their only child. "They said you no longer existed," Léa admits to her sister mournfully. She explains how their parents had forbidden Léa, then a teenager, to contact Juliette. In another scene, Léa says to her husband Luc (Serge Hazanavicius), "My parents killed my sister in my mind."
Juliette and her parents have something in common: they have willingly terminated relationships with their children—Juliette by literally ending Pierre's life, and Juliette's parents by figuratively "killing" Juliette. However, while Juliette's actions appear more deplorable on the surface, Claudel implies that the emotional slaughter of Juliette at the hands of her parents is more chilling, if only because such motivations involved scorn and resentment as opposed to love.
Theme of Protection
The theme of protection weaves consistently throughout the film. Each character is actively engaged in protecting someone or something. Such a theme is symbolic of our awareness as human beings of the overall fragility of life as well as our subsequent need to exercise some modicum of control.
Juliette is protective of herself. Having been exposed to devastating losses, she understandably seals her emotions and her vulnerability off from others. But she is able to open up to those who are similarly wounded—including her mentally unstable yet well-meaning parole officer (Frédéric Pierrot) and Léa's colleague Michel (Laurent Grevill), a bohemian loner who spent ten years teaching in prisons.
Léa is fiercely protective of her relationship with Juliette. Having been forced as a teen to abandon her sister, Léa is determined to reestablish their bond on an intimate and compassionate level. She is intolerant of Luc's initial aversion to Juliette and inability to view her as someone significant in Léa's life, but Léa does not allow him to deter her. When Luc disdainfully inquires how long Juliette will be staying with them, Léa replies, "As long as it takes."
Luc is invested in protecting his children, specifically from Juliette. Although willing to be temporarily charitable for Léa's sake, he is wary about having Juliette stay for any extensive length of time. At one point, he cancels an evening out with Léa when he discovers she has left the children with her sister. But Luc's assumptions about Juliette begin to shift after she expertly mends his dislocated shoulder. For Luc, this event adds dimensionality to Juliette's reticent persona and causes him to put some of his judgments aside.
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