ITAP 5/ Development of Ideas and Structure in Moving Image.

In this ITAP lecture we got tought about movie structures, how to develope a story and a character.

I chose to explain the film "I've loved you so long" which is an independent film from France, written and directed by Philippe Claudel.



The film is about the live of a middle-aged woman called Juliette (Kirsten Scott Thomas), who deals with guilt, punishment and judgement being released from prison after a 15 years sentence. The film describes her way to rehabilitate and to obtain redemption.

The structures of movies are in a 3 act structure; Beginning: middle: end, with no need to stay in the same order.  In this movie 3 act structure is shown but not as in movies where theres a hero solving a problem and a happy ending is predictable.
"I've loved you so long" is almost in the same consistent atmosphere. Nevertheless, beginning, middle and end can be found in this example.

In the first act Juliette is collected at Nancy airport from her sister Léa. Juliette came to stay with Léa who lives in a house with her husband Luc, his father and their 2 adopted daughters. After the arrival of Juliette, Luc and Lea have a discussion about Juliettes stay and by then the audience knows she was in jail for murder. The mystery what the reason of her sentence is hidden.
Luc is supersticious about the moving in of Juliette and fears the safety of his children. The audience soon discovers she was in jail for the murder of her six-year-old son.

The second act is about the confrontation with society. She tries to find a job and isn't surprised to be avoided by some interviewers. Having been abondend by her parents, friends and society, Lea is at first the only one who stands behind her with termlessness and persistance.
Juliette soon finds a friend in her social worker and gets introduced to Michel (Laurent Grévill) who is a collegue of Léa. She relys on Michel who used to work in jail. She finds out that her social worker who had depressions took his life.

In the third act Juliette slowly starts over again and gets a daily routine. She starts to enjoy life in generel through work, reading, visiting art museums with Michel and meeting friends of Léa.
The mystery of Juliette's action reveals through her sister who accidently finds a laboratory report and a picture of her nephew. This report shows that Juliettes son had terminal cancer. Léa confronts Juliette with what she had found. In the end Juliette tells her story.

Juliette as the Protagonist/main character is a very reserved, chain-smoking middle aged woman. She radiates grief, hopelessness and seems to be unpredictable.  The Antagonist is also Juliette because she causes the conflict in the family. She stands in a constant conflikt to herself and to others. The charakter is not trying to explain or to find any excuse by her actions. She doesn't expect people to understand her because one way or the other she was guilty.