I’ve Loved You So Long / Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (2008)

The absence of Kristin Scott Thomas (and Sally Hawkins for Happy-Go-Lucky) from the Best Actress nominations at this year’s Oscars is a fucking farce.  If anyone thinks that Angelina Jolie did a better job in Changeling, for example, then they really need to watch this again.  And then if they still think it, then they’re irredeemably lost.  Kristin Scott Thomas, who I’ve never really admired before, is a revelation here.  Her delicate, nuanced, progressively revealing portrayal of Juliette is everything that Jolie’s unsubtle, tub-thumping, wailing banshee “look at me, I’m acting here dammit” approach is not.  At least in the Best Supporting Actress category Penélope Cruz can hold her head up alongside Elsa Zylberstein who plays Léa  here.  And she’s the only one who can because Marisa Tomei certainly fucking can’t.  This is a powerful, moving, sad- but not depressing- and engrossing film which acts as a vehicle for the lead actress.  There is a profound sorrow in her every unpunctuated silence which seems to project and unsettle the viewer.  I felt like I was watching the tortuous struggle within her as she thousand-yard-stared, fidgeted and groped for something positive to cling onto in almost every scene.  It is an extremely discomfiting experience.  The character arc she portrays is as gentle and gradual and utterly convincing as you could really hope for.

The film as a whole, however, is not the trying experience that it would be reasonable to expect given the strength of Scott Thomas’s performance and the sombre material of the film.  Indeed it is, to use the most hackneyed phrase I can think of to describe it, life-affirming.  I had no clear idea about what I was going to see when I began watching this, I had read no reviews and seen no trailers- all that I really knew was that it was French (I am an unashamed Francophile, so that would be reason enough) and that it had been nominated for a couple of BAFTAs- though it won none and Elsa Zylberstein was again overlooked for fuck’s sake- but the storyline was clearly revealed in stages.  This isn’t to say that the ending would surprise anyone, you don’t need to be Columbo to deduce what it is that’s coming, but that the way the story moves to reach the outcome is a success.

It isn’t a perfect film by any means.  As is often the case where there is a towering lead performance, the film tends to be overbalanced and becomes less than the sum of its parts- There Will Be Blood is a great example of what I mean.  In a first time director, Philippe Claudel, this is pretty understandable.  The sub-plots which do not focus upon Kristin Scott Thomas but are instead peripheral to her (Luc coming to terms with Juliette, the storyline featuring Capitaine Fauré, Michel’s growing attraction toward her) feel a little underdeveloped- as if Claudel knew he was getting something really special from the lead and was terrified of focusing anywhere else.  With experience the confidence to know how and when to do that will come, I hope.

And so, a good film with a couple of great performances and a Director to keep an eye on for better things to come.  Smashing.  7/10