Philippe Claudel worked as a teacher in a prison for 11 years, but he never taught anyone quite like Juliette, the lead character in his new movie, “I’ve Loved You So Long.”
Juliette is released from prison when the film opens, having served 15 years for the murder of her child.
“During this time I met different people, but I didn’t meet exactly Juliette,“ Claudel says in accented but fluent English. “I discovered the face of her humanity.”
Audiences will, too, especially given the brilliant turn by Kristin Scott Thomas as the tormented ex-convict.
What’s Thomas, best known for her work in English-language films like “Random Hearts” and “The English Patient,” doing in a French feature? Possibly collecting her second Oscar nomination.
Her turn as Juliette, a dazed woman taken in by her younger sister (Elsa Zylberstein), is drawing serious Oscar attention.
“She speaks perfect French with just a little delicious accent,” Claudel says of Scott, who was seen earlier this year in the terrific French thriller “Tell No One.” “She’s been very under-employed in French movies before this film.”
Claudel wanted to show Juliette in an utterly unglamorous fashion. She wears no makeup, dresses in nondescript clothes and appears disinterested in starting her life again.
Thomas had no problem with any of these directions.
Claudel, a bestselling novelist in France, has been aching to create a project with a strong female character at its center.
“In my novels I explore constantly the male universe. I wanted to change that,” he says. “I wanted to show the real face of a woman, to work with an actress, to use the light and sound, the clothes and the set.”
(Photo: Kristin Scott Thomas plays a woman trying to resurrect her life after a lengthy prison sentence in the French drama “I’ve Loved You So Long.”)
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