While Helen Mirren has become the grande dame of British cinema and Keira Knightley is the vogue face of English female thesping, everyone is forgetting about Kristin Scott Thomas. For she may be our finest current export.
Perhaps due to twin bad habits of not chasing profile-raising blockbusters and making films in French, Scott Thomas is often under-appreciated for her range and versatility.
I’ve Loved You So Long has a chance of rectifying this wrong, deserving the same crossover success as previous Gallic exports Tell No-One (also start Scott Thomas), La Vie En Rose and The Serpent.
She gives a remarkable turn as Juliette, a woman imprisoned for fifteen years for a terrible crime, and released into the care of her younger sister, Lea (Zylberstein, tremulous, yet resilient).
Raised as an only child and forbidden contact with the family mouton noir, Lea now feels she must make amends and re-introduce her sis back into society.
Lea’s husband Luc (Hazanavicius) is not so understanding, but their adopted Vietnamese children (Lea confesses they are a ‘real Benetton family’) warm to their long-absent aunt, particularly spirited P’tit Lys (Segur), while Juliette has kind-of timid flirtations with Lea’s colleague Michel (Grevill) and her cop parole officer, Faure (Pierrot).
Novelistic in its revelation of information, Claudel sheds light on Juliette’s past gradually, toying with easy to recognise thriller conventions (inviting the audience to share Luc’s distrust of his sister-in-law around the kids), but delivering something far more arresting, mature and gratifying.
The first time director offers moments of tear-jerking warmth (a large get together in a country cottage which sees Juliette drop her guard for the first time) and deftly switches moods to notch up tension (a dinner party that turns into a grilling on Juliette’s past), basing his visual style in handsome, melancholic autumnal browns and reds.
Zylberstein is solid support as the forgiving, guilty younger sibling, but this is Scott Thomas’ film, and she commands it with a quiet performance (literally), conveying a range of conflicted emotions through her expressive eyes and gaunt, ashen features.
A sober, unusual and gripping drama destined to be remembered for its mature writing and superlative acting.
Rob Daniel
