I’ve Loved You So Long

This tense, absorbing drama revolves around a cultured, educated ex-con who leaves prison after 15 years. Juliette Fontaine (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) comes to stay with her professor sister, Lea (played by Elsa Zylberstein) after her release.
The rest of the movie is about their lurch towards reconciliation as a family. Writer / director Philippe Claudel keeps an elegant balance between rousing empathy and sustaining psychological suspense throughout the exercise, which, however, is meant to please only those who are patient enough to wait.
Scott Thomas, formerly a doctor, is seeking out a way to earn a decent living. She will take almost anything she gets, but the going is not easy for an ex-convict, especially when they ask her what she went to jail for. She also tries; in the meantime, to win back her family’s trust by sitting for her sister’s two adopted daughters.
She forges a few new ties, suffers, and picks herself up from time to time. For instance, Juliette fails, in general, to mix as much as others would want with her co-workers. Slowly, the plot unveils the reasons for her reticence and her own understanding of her situation.
Claudel’s Juliette could well be one of the year’s most compelling characters, with this bitter tale of abandonment and redemption as one of the year’s most moving tales.
At its core, I’ve Loved You So Long is about how difficult it is to truly forgive, how being patient is far more difficult than many think and how being understanding and supportive is easier said than done. With something of a thriller’s movement in its plot, this movie is actually entirely devoted to human relationships.