Rough re-entry

Kristin Scott Thomas shines as a tormented parolee in French drama Il y a longtemps que je t’aime

by MALCOLM FRASER

Kristin Scott Thomas, a serious actress who briefly flirted with celebrity in The English Patient before settling comfortably back into the arthouse scene, has long shown off her bilingual chops with supporting roles in French films (Ne le dis à personne and La Doublure most recently); now, she’s the full-on star of a French drama, Philippe Claudel’s Il y a longtemps que je t’aime. She plays Juliette, a woman recently paroled after 15 years in the clink (her crime, though revealed fairly early on, is of such dramatic weight that I won’t spoil it here). Elsa Zylberstein is her sister Léa, a kindly soul who brings Juliette into her home against the grumbles of her husband (Serge Hazanavicius).

Frail, haggard and intense, signalling alienation with her every move, Thomas initially recalls Isabelle Huppert in The Pianist (although rest assured, neither she nor the film are anywhere near that creepy). She gives a great performance, moving slowly and tentatively, her face full of subtle yet profound expressions—her reaction to a trio of wheelchair-bound youths joyriding down a sloping street, a fleeting moment in the film, is worth the price of admission alone. Writer and first-time director Claudel achieves a fine balance in invoking a mixture of terrified unease as we anticipate her next move, and sympathy for her difficulties at integrating back into society.

The film has a nicely woven web of supporting characters, including pint-sized Lise Ségur as Zylberstein and Hazanavicius’s adopted cutie-pie daughter, Laurent Grévill as Zylberstein’s colleague and Thomas’s suitor, and Frédéric Pierrot as Thomas’s frazzled parole officer, who brings some much-needed comic relief before Claudel drops another dark dramatic bomb on us halfway through.

An 11th-hour plot twist barely avoids derailing the film’s narrative and moral ambiguity, and some of the minor characters are so grievously underdeveloped that they would have been better off on the cutting room floor, notably Jean-Claude Arnaud as Hazanavicius’s mute father, who seems to be there mostly to be cute. But Thomas’s performance and Claudel’s command of the complex themes and unsettling atmosphere make this worth checking out.

IL Y A LONGTEMPS QUE JE T’AIME
OPENS THIS FRIDAY, SEPT. 12

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