I've Loved You So Long
by Philippe Claudel
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DVD details
Actor: Elsa Zylberstein, Frédéric Pierrot, Kristin Scott Thomas, Laurent Grévill, Serge HazanaviciusDirector: Philippe Claudel
Brand: Sony Pictures
Cinematographer: Jérôme Alméras
Writer: Philippe Claudel
Editor: Virginie Bruant
Producer: Sylvestre Guarino
Producer: Yves Marmion
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Original Language); English (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 117 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-03-03
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of I've Loved You So Long
DVD Review: Implausible plot 'tease' undermines otherwise engrossing drama
Summary: 2 Stars
'Il y a longtemps que je t'aime' is the story about a woman who's been in prison for murdering her six year old son and after being paroled, goes to live with her younger sister and her family. The film intentionally is set up so that we don't learn the reason why the woman commits the murder until the film's climax.
The reason and circumstances of the murder are so implausible that it ruins an otherwise fairly engrossing drama. The story follows Juliette Fontaine (Kristen Scott Thomas) as she attempts to adjust to her new life outside of prison. In the beginning, she's basically an emotional basket case. After being picked up by her sister Lea, just after her release from prison, she can hardly communicate at all. For the first half hour, there are long silences despite Lea's attempts to get Juliette to 'open up'. She's so cut off that she ends up yelling at Lea's adopted Vietnamese daughter (wonderfully played by child actor Lise Segur) after the child asks her to read her a bedtime story. Juliette even meets a man at a bar and has sex with him at a hotel (but admits that she takes no enjoyment in it).
Juliette begins meeting with her parole officer (in France, it appears the Police officers serve that function). The Parole Officer is an odd fellow who seems like he's the one in need of a therapist (he's constantly revealing his personal feelings to Juliette in their meetings; later it is revealed that he has inexplicably committed suicide!). A social worker arranges for Juliette to have a job interview at a small factory but is thrown out of the office by the firm's boss after he learns that she's a child murderer.
Eventually, Juliette begins to become more communicative especially with the children who take a liking to her. She overcomes Lea's husband's (Luc's) distrust of her who initially doesn't want her near the children. On the job front, she obtains a probationary position at a hospital as a medical transcriptionist. At first, she almost loses the job as she's very aloof with fellow employees; but after the hospital director implores her to be more friendly, she eventually opens up and is offered a permanent position.
Lea also introduces Juliette to her colleague Marcel, a professor at the university where she also teaches. Marcel is probably the most interesting character in the film--a wise middle-aged man who has had his share of heartaches. Marcel expresses interest in Juliette but she's not ready to get involved. (later it's suggested that she finally does get involved with him.) A party scene foreshadows the overall implausibility of the film's plot. When a drunken colleague of Lea's insists that Juliette reveal information about her past, she blurts out that she was in 15 years in prison for murder. Everyone at the table however takes it at as a joke (except for Marcel). Why no one there had ever heard of this murder case (even 15 years ago) is highly implausible. France is a small country compared to the United States and the murder of a child would certainly be the type of case that at least someone at the dinner table would have remembered (or if anyone had an interest in Juliette, they could have googled her on their computer a few days earlier and found out about her sordid past in a few seconds).
This brings us to the film's unlikely climax. Lea finds a picture of her murdered nephew along with a love note written by her sister to the boy. The note is written on the back of the boy's medical report which Lea brings to her own physician and asks him to decipher it. It seems that the boy had some kind of fatal illness, information which somehow Juliette was able to keep from her husband and other members of her family. While it's revealed that Juliette knew from the beginning that the boy was sick, no one notices it except Juliette.
Eventually, Juliette takes the boy away from the father (and is later accused of kidnapping him). Instead of seeking help from her fellow physicians, she's convinced (since she's a doctor) that her son is a complete terminal case. She decides to end his suffering by injecting him with an overdose of some kind of medication, killing him (in effect, a mercy killing). I can understand a mother ending up performing euthanasia on an elderly parent but on a six year old? No way. A mother would have tried to get help (even if her own instincts as a physician told her that the chances were basically nil). What's more, wouldn't an autopsy have revealed that the child was terminally ill? Would the prosecutor have prosecuted Juliette without determining a motive? Hardly likely. In addition, if the child was suffering tremendously (such as in the case of terminal cancer patients), there are always some kinds of drugs (such as morphine) to alleviate the suffering of patients in the final days of their illness.
Il y a longtemps que je t'aime devolves into a tale of an undeserved redemption. Juliette is redeemed due to the mitigating circumstances of her crime. In the end, she's let off the hook because she didn't really commit a murder but rather a mercy killing (an event which takes place only in the wild imagination of the film's scenarist). Lea's unconditional and unquestioning love for her sister would have been seen as something quite different at the film's climax (perhaps a form of naivety or gullibility) had Juliette's motive for killing her son turned out to be more sinister or nefarious in some way.
Il y a longtemps que je t'aime is an engrossing drama undermined by plotting which was not thought out carefully from the very beginning. This is unfortunate for the actors who for the most part, present solid and convincing performances.
Description of I've Loved You So Long
Juliette Fontaine (Kristin Scott Thomas, Golden Globe® Nominee for I've Loved You So Long, Oscar® nominee for The English Patient) is a frail, haunted woman, an ex-doctor who's a shell of her former self. Having served 15 years in prison for an unspeakable crime, she's back on the "outside." With nowhere else to go, she comes to live with her loving but estranged sister Lea (Elsa Zylberstein). Together the sisters embark on a painful but redemptive journey back from life's darkest edge in this gripping drama of struggle and salvation.Bestsellers in DVD
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