Recent parolee Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) has been estranged from
what remains of her family for 15 years, and has a drab wardrobe of
browns and greys to match her battered psyche. Lea (Elsa Zylberstein, below left),
her younger sister, picks up Juliette at the airport and subsequently
takes her into her Parisian home, which she shares with her husband
Luc, his mute father, and their two adopted little Vietnamese girls. As
Juliette is slowly reintegrated into society both at large and in
small, a slow thaw occurs, with unanticipated consequences for all
involved.

There’s a pinch of self-conscious Franco-genuflection to the directorial debut of novelist and literature professor Philippe Claudel, most particularly in the form of a dinner scene praising Eric Rohmer. For those who’ve sampled even a bit of French cinema, the emotional contours of this film are familiar, and in that regard the movie feels a bit like a stacked deck, daring one to rebel against its slow-developing appraisal of confinement and regret. The studied warmth and unfussy sincerity of its telling, though, wins out; I’ve Loved You So Long is a movie about familial silences and the great, tilled-earth spaces in between, both in relationships and in one’s head. The slow reveal of the full reason behind Juliette’s incarceration gives the film some extra emotional heft, but this is first and foremost an Oscar-level showcase for Thomas, as a woman who learns to purge herself of the swallowed self-loathing that has soured her soul. Think of it as a French secular rebirth drama, about self-forgiveness and learning to walk looking at least partially forward, and not always backwards. (Sony Pictures Classics, PG-13, 117 minutes)