Prison Break

After a long week of Art Basel Miami Beaching spent spying on celebrities like Alex Rodriguez, Marilyn Manson, Naomi Campbell, Ivana Trump, Kelly Klein, and Mary Kate Olsen, I decided I finally needed to watch I’ve Loved You So Long.

Because, y’ know, nothing counterbalances the fun of drinking free champs at a recently opened South Beach hotel and star-sighting like a bleak French film.

I’ve Loved You So Long tells the story of Juliette (a great Kristin Scott Thomas), a woman who reunites with her sister Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) after 15 years.

In my October preview of the film, I mentioned that Léa didn’t really know where Juliette had been all those years. But she did – Léa grew up keenly aware that her older sister was away in prison for murder, and that she was never to speak of her again, at least not in front of her parents, who all but erased their eldest from their lives.

This is the story of the sister’s reunion, mostly of Juliette’s unfathomable struggle to reconnect with a world, with a family that had all but seemingly forgotten and moved along just fine without her. But it is also is about Léa’s quest to welcome back Juliette, to help her know that she never, not for one day stopped thinking about her.

Behind Juliette’s bitterness and icy façade hides a terribly painful secret, and allow me to say that Scott is a sight to see as she reveals it.

A Broadcast Film Critics Association’s Critics’ Choice Awards nominee for in the Best Foreign Language Film category, I’ve Loved You So Long is, I thought, a bit manipulative, though.

It really wants us to think the worst of Juliette, but when the truth does come out, it’s a punch to the gut. She may be a free woman, indeed, but hers is a prison she cannot escape.

Both Scott and Zylberstein deliver really strong performances that should be hard to overlook. Scott, a top-shelf British actress, speaks in flawless French, with strong emotion that ebbs and flows, while Zylberstein is just so precise, audiences really ought to watch them on screen together.

My Rating ***

Photo: EW.com.