Kristin Scott Thomas brings such a flinty, coiled intensity to her role as a middle-aged woman newly released from prison after serving a 15-year sentence in I’ve Loved You So Long that she damn near burns a hole through the screen. Cautiously navigating the particulars of an outside world she left long ago, Scott Thomas’ Juliette almost seems like an alien being when kid sister Lea (the excellent Elsa Zylberstein) picks her up at the airport at the start of the film. For a while, most of Juliette’s overdetermined actions — making small talk with her young nieces, interviewing for a job she’s clearly overqualified for, just getting through the day like normal folk do — seem to take place in slo-mo. But by the time Juliette reveals the whole truth behind her incarceration, it’s like a splash of cold water in the face, and one of the year’s great movie moments. HHH 1/2
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2009.