I've Loved You So Long (DVD)

Juliette Fontaine has just been released from prison after serving a fifteen-year sentence. Her younger sister Lea comes to take her to her own family home. Lea is married to Luc and they have two adopted Vietnamese daughters; Luc's father, who has suffered a stroke, also lives with them. How will Lea's family react to Juliette, who has to stay with them until she has a permanent job and can support herself? And how will Juliette cope with her return to the outside world and relate to people she comes into contact with, who react in different ways to her crime? The nature of Juliette's crime is revealed gradually, but her reason for committing it is not ...  Read the complete review

I've Loved You So Long recieved a lot of attention for its rather controversial subject matter - I was curious going in how they would present a woman who had murdered her own son, and moreover, how they would make her a sympathetic character. I saw a great challenge ahead of the filmmakers and could only imagine how they would resolve this. Juliette Fontaine (Kristin Scott Thomas) is released from prison after serving a fifteen-year sentence for the murder of her six-year-old son, and attempts to re-adapt to life outside prison. Although welcomed by her family, this is still a tentative welcoming, and she is forced to hide facts from new people she meets, out ...  Read the complete review

I think this was the best independent/foreign/art-house film of 2008. I was not too familiar with Kristen Scott-Thomas before watching this, only knowing she was a Hollywood actress. She really made her role her own in this film, and her performance in French was very convincing and precise. Of course, there are subtitles, but the entire film is in French. This doesn't matter in the least, because the raw emotions are the same in any language and you see souls and hearts break in pieces. It's not a jaunty, happy little film by any means. The storyline unfolds throughout, but the jist of it without giving too much away is the ...  Read the complete review