I've Loved You So Long is a French drama film, which tells the story of a woman struggling to be 'normal' in her interactions and with herself after spending fifteen years in prison, under the charge of killing her young son. For the entire time since the act, Juliette never says a word to anyone about the ordeal. She neither defends herself nor blame anyone for what she did. She remains indifferent to life around her. Her mysterious silence forms the basis of the movie.
Juliette was presented with a personal challenge, which she chooses to address in the best way that she thought possible. That response involved taking the life of her own and only son, in order to keep him from suffering through an incurable and a very painful terminal illness. I differ from Juliette on her choice, but then the choices we make are defined as much by who we are as the role they play in determining who we become.
What Juliette carried was not the silence but the burden of guilt. Guilt of her failure, of her inability to save her child, of her having to make the choice to end the very life that she brought to this world. What Juliette carried was also anger at the injustice of it all, the ruthlessness and brutal cruelty of it. Juliette was not seeking to be understood. She did not seek to exonerate herself of any blame. She was not looking for salvation or comfort. Juliette's silence was her protest against life, against beauty, against existence. It was a very personal expression of her grief, anger, remorse, and guilt.
Her silence finally broke not because it was time but because of the healing that she experienced in being with her sister's family, in finding her ability to care and be giving again to her sister's child, in finally accepting that sometimes things go the way they do not because we were lacking, incapable, or failures, but because that is how they just happened to be on that occasion.
