By Kohinoor Dasgupta
(Originally published on May 22, 2011, in my weblog Draupadiarjun)
(The review contains spoilers)
THIS FRENCH FILM I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t’aime) (2008), written and directed by Philippe Claudel, dares to be old-fashioned in a very contemporary setting.
Léa (Elsa Zylberstein), like Claudel himself, a professor of literature at a university in Nancy in northeastern France, is approached by Social Services to host her sister when the latter is released from prison after serving fifteen years. Léa accepts gladly, although she knows why her sister had gone to prison. This makes her an unusual person already! When Juliette Fontaine (the sister, played by Kristin Scott Thomas) had gone on trial for kidnapping and killing her six-year-old son, her ex-husband had refused to even look at her while testifying against her. Juliette’s parents had gone from being proud of their beautiful and clever elder daughter, a doctor, to disowning her. Their old friends knew better than to mention Juliette; new friends were told they had the one daughter, Léa.
Léa herself had never visited Juliette in prison except the one time, recently, when she went there to ask Juliette to stay with her after her release. Till virtually the end of the movie, Léa doesn’t know why Juliette took her child’s life. Her love and trust are given unconditionally to Juliette. Juliette is not on probation for Léa. Léa is not naïve or evangelical nor hypocritically dutiful. She just remembers this much older sister whom she used to adore and idolize till one day, when she was in high school, she was told that Juliette had committed this terrible crime, and consequently had ceased to exist for her family. If you want to enjoy this movie you must first accept the possibility that people like Léa may exist.
Lea is not single: she is part of a real “(the united colors of) Benetton family”. She is herself half-French and half-English; Luc, her lexicographer husband, is half-Polish and half-Russian. Luc’s father Paul (the Polish half) doesn’t speak after a stroke three years ago, but is a benign and restful presence in the house. Luc and Léa are the proud parents of two little girls, P’tit Lys and Emelia, both adopted from Vietnam. There is a maid-of-all-works, Marie-Paule, never seen but heard and heard of. Juliette, whose world for fifteen years was a prison cell where fellow inmates called her “the absent one” because she never seemed to be there (and where she kept a stack of books by her pillow as a barricade against the outside world that got on just fine without her) and a little triangular courtyard that she paced compulsively, is immersed into the ordinary, busy life of this family, where people actually have meals together and P’tit Lys (memorably played by young Lise Ségur) chatters and asks questions, where "Katrina” Marie-Paule breaks dinner plates that are glued back and used, and Léa and Luc carry on with their work and weekends, their swimming and soccer and outings with the children, interrupting nothing.
Even so, Juliette keeps her distance from Léa. The first time she really connects with the younger woman is when Léa tells her that both Luc and she are able to have children, but she didn’t want to give birth. "It’s because of what I did,” Juliette says, appalled. It’s the first time she understands that familial bonds can’t be completely severed, and that Léa was profoundly impacted by the sister who vanished. It occurs to Juliette that Léa too is entitled to healing and some answers.
As an ex-convict, Juliette has her own, mandatory social contacts – her probation officer, the inspector at the local police station, a couple of people she meets for a possible job, a man she picks up at a bar. Of all these people, she likes Inspector Fauré, who does his policeman’s job and dreams of the Orinoco river.
To their friends and colleagues, Luc and Léa introduce Juliette simply as Léa’s sister. Apparently, in their educated and easy-going circle, people don’t probe unless very drunk. Like I said before, the old-fashioned courtesies are served up in a very modern setting. Juliette interests Michel (Laurent Grévill), Léa’s colleague. Together they view Émile Friant’s works at the museum of fine arts. In our minds, the thought takes hold that prison can be of many kinds. In Friant’s ‘La Douleur’ (1898), the painting that stops Juliette in her tracks, at least one of the three women is incarcerated in grief. Michel’s favorite painting, ‘Jeune Nanceienne dans un paysage de neige’, painted in 1887, the expression on the young girl’s face reflects the bleakness of war and winter while the abbey on the hill holds out the promise of freedom.
In the months that pass, Léa pieces together her past with Juliette that their parents had methodically lost. In that past was a song the sisters used to sing together at the piano, À la claire fontaine, which has the line "Il y a longtemps que je t’aime".
À la claire fontaine,/M'en allant promener J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle/Que je m'y suis baigné Refrain : Il y a longtemps que je t'aime/Jamais je ne t'oublierai
In the process, Juliette reenters life.
In the end, she tells Léa why she killed little Pierre. But what is important in the film is not the why, but the fact that Léa was not afraid to remember her love for her sister even without knowing why Juliette had committed that terrible crime. Even Luc, with no such memory to help him, eventually is ready to believe that Juliette can be a loving aunt to P’tit Lys and Emelia. In the space she is given, Juliette takes her baby steps back into life. All the actors in the ensemble cast do their best. Sometimes the atmosphere might get a bit too gung-ho, but you take it in the package. I will always remember Kristin Scott Thomas for her work in this film.
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