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100Kristin Scott Thomas' performance in I've Loved You So Long is one of a small handful of highlights by which people will remember this year in movies. This is acting at its most exalted.
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91For all its moodiness, despair and disconnect, I've Loved You So Long is all about acknowledging human error and embracing ties -- to family and life -- that can't be undone.
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90Performances this strong and direction this sensitive make us simply grateful to have an emotional story we can sink our teeth into and enjoy.
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90Philippe Claudel gives his heroine unusual depth, which Kristin Scott Thomas reveals with unusual passion.
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90Their characters' desire (Scott Thomas and Zylberstein) -- no, need -- to repair their fragile bond feels as achingly real as the mother lode of hidden pain that gets exposed by the work of these two great actresses.
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But let's be honest: Any actress can do melancholy; it takes a special talent to recognize that there's a certain luxuriousness, a certain joy, to be found in longtime self-hatred.
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88This is one of Kristin Scott Thomas' most inspired performances.
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88This is a picture of quiet observation, contained emotion, the hush before the cathartic scream.
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88This film teaches the rewards of patience for directors, for actors and for audiences, too. The compelling reality of Juliette's plight comes from how subtly and gradually she emerges from her carapace.
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83It's no insult to the rest to say that this is one of those films that sells itself on the strength of a single performance.
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83The film deftly sketches a sibling relationship complicated by obligation, guilt, mistrust, and, not least, an abiding love.
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A scintillating drama about pain and healing made with intelligence and compassion.
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80Philippe Claudel's direction is both probing and delicate, and Scott Thomas's face, even immobile, keeps you watching, searching for hints of her character's past, unable to blink for fear of missing something vital.
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80A revelation comes near the end that is both tremendously moving and a bit disappointing, in the way that the solutions to great mysteries frequently are. This turn does not diminish the accomplishment of Ms. Scott Thomas's deep, subtle and altogether stunning performance, but it does alter the scale of the movie, turning it into a more manageable, less existentially unsettling drama.
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80A movie that is utterly engrossing despite being, on the surface, about very little.
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80Claudel turns out to be very good at the psychology of intimacy. An observant man, he has assembled a large (and, to us, unknown) cast of actors around his star, and he dramatizes her slow reawakening with an infinite number of small, sharply etched details.
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75The movie is held together by the scenes between Thomas and Zylberstein, which are superbly acted.
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75Director Claudel makes you wait until film's end to discover why, exactly, Juliette committed her unspeakable crime, and it's the only disappointing aspect of the movie -- the only time I've Loved You So Long traipses into melodrama. But the rest of this utterly absorbing picture never strikes a false note.
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75Scott Thomas' reserve as an actor - which probably helped keep her from top stardom after an Oscar nomination for "The English Patient" (1996) - makes her perfect casting for this French film, the auspicious debut of director Philippe Claudel.
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75Writer/director Philippe Claudel knows just how to structure a character study of this sort, so that key elements and important secrets are revealed over time, piquing our interest. The film is almost like a novel or short story, so one's curiosity is satisfied slowly.
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75A novelist and screenwriter, Claudel's directing for the first time here, and he leans on melodramatic contrivances more than he needs to. Still, he gives us a lean and observant weepie, and the mystery of Thomas's Juliette pulls you in.
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75The movie's action largely takes place beneath the skin. The pace is slow but not glacial, yet Claudel demands patience. Ultimately, I've Loved You So Long is uplifting, although one might not expect that from the thematic material.
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75Without Kristin Scott Thomas, I've Loved You So Long would be a watchable but hardly a memorable movie. With her, it's both - she so fully inhabits the character that everyone and everything around her are simply enhanced.
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75This is a movie about actors acting; who cares why Juliette was in the pen?
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75It would be easy to overrate I've Loved You So Long, which often dampens its best effects with undue tastefulness, but the image of Scott Thomas, with her despairing resilience, stays with one.
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60Scott Thomas breathes more emotion into Juliette's affectless, haunted demeanor than most actors do with pages of dialogue.
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A modestly satisfying tale of sisterly love weighed down by a history of family betrayal and mendacity.
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50Claudel commits the cardinal sin of withholding the full story until the very end, when it spills out in a histrionic scene between the two sisters and largely exonerates the older one.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 14 out of 19
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Mixed: 2 out of 19
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Negative: 3 out of 19
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JenL9
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ErickS9A sad, beautiful film featuring a heart-rending performance by Scott Thomas. Nuanced and subtle, yet intense and compelling.
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Andrew8