The Martlet

“My six-year-old son.”

The woman’s potential employer stared at her in outraged disbelief for a moment, stunned by her answer, before screaming for her to get out of his office. His question had been simple: “who did you murder?”

Phillipe Claudel’s film, Il y a Longtemps que Je T’aime (I’ve Loved You So Long), follows Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) who goes to live with her sister’s family after 15 years of imprisonment for the murder of her son. Léa, (Elsa Zylberstein) enthusiastically welcomes her sister into her home. Despite Juliette’s sullen reluctance, Léa is determined to love her and get her to move on at all costs.

Though Léa’s husband Luc (Serge Hazanavicius), is wary of Juliette’s presence around the couple’s two young adopted children, Léa remains almost blind to her sister’s crime. Subconsciously she tries to get Juliette to open up and give an explanation for the crime, which she has refused to provide, even during her trial.

Initially worn, divorced from her husband and disowned by her parents, Juliette moves throughout the world with a hardened indifference. However, Lea’s determination and the irresistible charm of her young nieces eventually get to her, and as the film moves on Juliette begins to warm up slightly, and others begin to warm up to her. She begins to form friendships with people, though she keeps a firm distance from those around her.

In one heart-warming scene, Juliette teaches her niece how to play the piano, just as she had taught her sister years earlier. The audience is met with conflicting notions about this hardened, cold-blooded killer as viewers come to see more and more of her warm, gentle soul showing through.

Though Juliette becomes continually more integrated back into the world after being a prisoner for so many years, she is still trapped in a cell of her mind that refuses to let go of the past. Though most people see her as relatively normal, reminders of her past keep coming back to haunt her, as new friends begin to probe her about her past, and she finds it impossible to escape from the painful memories.

The film, written and directed by Claudel, is a story about love, family and starting over. Overall, Il y a Longtemps que Je T’aime is successful in depicting the bonds of sisterhood and evoking complicated emotions from the viewers. It was nominated for two Golden Globes, including a stab at best foreign film. However, the major flaw is that the plot relies so heavily on the mystery behind the murder (finally revealed in the last scene of the film), that the so-called mystery can be easily guessed with a fair degree of certainty too early on in the movie. There are also some elements that have little to do with the plotline (such as the suicide of Juliette’s parole officer) that could have been omitted entirely from the script.

Though slightly predictable and occasionally banal, the emotional performances given by the actors and the well-executed scenes that drive the emotionally charged plot forward make this film one worth seeing.