I’ve Loved You So Long (Phailappe Claudel 2008) BBC 4.

Kristin Scott Thomas plays a woman who is taken into her sister’s home after spending 15 years in prison. I missed the start of this. Some films are like spending 15 years in prison, so I wasn’t particularly worried. By the time I’d joined the action her sister, who plays a university lecturer was joking and flirting with another middle class tweed jacketeer while KST stood and furtively smoked a cigarette. There are worse things that watching KST, but smoking is a disgusting habit and I suspected that was why she got jailed.

Two things work together to make this memorable. One is KST. In some films I sometimes think that they could use a plant pot with a small nose and move it about when there is meant to be action and everybody would be happy.

KST is so beautifully sad, parcelling out trust, it’s difficult not to like her. She is irreplaceable.

The other thing that works like a Swiss Clock is the answering all the questions that the script had brought up. The question what did she do? is answered in the first third: she killed a child. Later we find out that it was her child. I lost track of time after that. But, perhaps the biggest shock was when she was trying to get a job as a medical receptionist and it is let slip that KST’s character had been a medical doctor. The main question: WHY she killed her own son, is left to near the end.

A brilliant performance that is pitch perfect.