I've Loved You So Long

I've Loved You So Long (2008, dir. Philippe Claudel; star. Kristin Scott Thomas)
1hour 57 minutes

Saw this Saturday night with Steph, and we split a diet pepsi and some popcorn.

**** SPOILERS AHEAD ****


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I've Loved You So Long is a new film from France that concerns a woman who gets out of prison after 15 years, serving time for murder. She goes to live with her younger sister, who was not allowed any contact with her sister during that time. Kristin Scott Thomas plays the newly freed woman, in a fairly emotionless performance until the last 5 minutes.

My problem with the film is simple; instead of actually caring about the characters and the story, all I actually cared about was who she killed, and why she killed them. We find out fairly early on that she killed her own child, and the fact that she plays a doctor made me suspect that euthanasia was the "why." And in the last 15 minutes or so, I found out that I was correct, though not fully correct. Because although Scott Thomas' character did euthanize her son, for valid reasons (the condition is never really revealed, though it must have been bad), she apparently never told anyone that that was how and why she killed her son. This serves only to support the feelings of the character, while not being realistic in any way (it also ignores the fact that her method would have been discovered in any halfway competent autopsy, which would be mandatory in any case of homicide). For me, anytime I am more concrned about the contruction of a film, rather than the film in and of itself, signals that the film isn't all that good to begin with.

2 1/2 stars out of 5.