I saw this film last week in London and it is excellent. Juliette (Scott Thomas) has been in prison for 15 years for killing her 6 year old son. She said nothing in her trial and her husband testified against her. Her much younger sister agrees with Social Services to house her and this is the tale of her rehabilitation. So far, so dull as dishwater, I hear you say. However what follows is as mesmerising as it is enchanting. There are some hilarious moments in her harrowing journey back to peace like the policeman to whom she has to report once a fortnight, who is obsessed with visiting the Orinocco and the café stud who reintroduces her to carnality, but there are also some dark, shocking ones, like when she tells a prospective employer why she was sentenced to 15 years or the visit to her mother living with Alzheimer's in a home. This sombre, grey, pallid woman seemingly drained of emotion gradually comes back to life, gaining both colour in her cheeks and an appetite for the daily joys of life. She is helped in no small part by her sister brilliantly played by Elsa Zylberstein who looks like the now departed and beautiful French actress, Claude Jade. The cherry on the cake is the final denouement when we learn why Juliette killed her son. The sense of intimacy between the two sisters and raw emotion is palpable and that is what will stick with me. This is real acting and real characterisation. If today's US film makers tried to make this, it would be sugary pap and if the British did it, it would be chirpy pap. Only French film makers seem to have the kind of dexterity to take what could easily have ended as some cheap self indulgent tearjerker a la Beaches and turn it into a riveting tale and an emotional roller-coaster. Definitely worth an Oscar but unlikely to get one.
Review of I've Loved You So Long
