Reviewed by Michael Edwards
Stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius,
Laurent Grévill, Frédéric Pierrot, Claire Johnston,
Jean-Claude Arnaud, Lise Ségur
Written by Philippe Claudel
Certification UK 12A | US PG-13
Runtime 115 minutes
Directed by Philippe Claudel
An absorbing character portrait that deals with some tricky subject matter, this is one of those films that leads you through a deep and meandering debate about life and morality. The setup is that Juliette Fontaine (Kristen Scott-Thomas) has just come out of prison and is staying with her sister Léa. She is reticent and Léa a little nervous. But as the film progresses we are treated to a neat unfolding of family relations, a moving extrapolation of what familial love is, and a carefully scripted look at the human psyche at its lowest and highest points.
All of these high-art themes are naturally embedded heavily in dialogue, and there is a real weight on the shoulders of the actors. It may therefore come as a surprise that in a French language movie Kristen Scott-Thomas was chosen as the lead. However, she proves resoundingly that her talents transcend linguistic barriers as she depicts this tricky scenario with an almost archetypally Gallic aura of introversion and moodiness; a moodiness that I have hitherto only seen French folks manage to convey through the careful brandishing of a cigarette. Elsa Zylberstein also stands out as her good-natured sister who pushes down any suspicions or fears to exude a hopefully positivity that comes across with a subtle brilliance on screen.
For all of these staples of an arthouse production, however, there were some serious flaws. The blandly overt references (or possibly thefts if you're feeling nasty) to Kieslowski's masterwork Three Colours Blue, a vastly superior film, failed in drawing in themes from a work that dealt with some similar ideas but rather drew attention to the edge that this film lacked. The naturalistic flow and beautiful colour schemes adopted by Kieslowski found no equivalent in I've Loved You so Long. Instead much of its depths were explored through the introduction of far too convenient plot devices: Léa's friend Michel just happened to have taught in prisons, her father in law is an affable mute, the perfect confidante, and Léa's children are not only angelically sweet but apparently geniuses too. It's all just a little bit too contrived and saccharin for my tastes. What's worse, when a film is taking on such a taxing and intriguing subject as this, it feels like a last minute capitulation that forces the film the just fall short of brilliance.
It's intriguing, it's well acted and it's incredibly brave in terms of subject matter. But there are far too many quickly conceived plot fixes for this to reach its full potential, which is a real shame.