I've Loved You So Long (PG-13) ***

By Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald

There are certain times in life when hearing the words ''You can tell me everything; you can talk to me'' is the greatest gift a person can receive. Juliette, the protagonist of I've Loved You So Long, is in the midst of a period of withdrawal, silence and great, unnamed inner torment. In a way, the entire movie is one long, expectant wait until Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) reaches the point at which she can build the courage to stop wielding her unspoken pain as a shield against the world -- a wait, in other words, for Juliette to forgive herself.

The reasons for Juliette's detachment are slowly doled out over the course of the film, which has been written and directed by Philippe Claudel with an emphasis on its superb performances. We first meet Juliette sitting in an airport, brow furrowed and eyes distant, waiting to be picked up by her younger sister Lea (Elsa Zylberstein). Judging by the awkward intimacy of their greeting, Juliette is returning home from a long trip or at least coming to visit her family after an extended absence.

Both assumptions are right but not in the way one might expect: A little later into the film, after Juliette has awkwardly moved into Lea's home and met her husband and two daughters, we learn she has just been released from prison after serving a 15-year sentence for a crime yet to be revealed. Whatever it was, Lea has apparently forgiven her, since she's nothing but thrilled to be reunited with her sister.

Lea's family isn't quite as excited (''How long will she stay?'' her husband asks; ''Isn't auntie a bit strange?'' her young daughter wonders), but they do their best to make the reticent woman feel at home. The beauty of Thomas' complex, singular performance as Juliette is that she keeps us at the same distance she keeps the other characters in the film -- she refuses to let anyone in, including the viewer -- while still drawing us into her loneliness and her impatience with the world for not understanding her state of mind.

And the more we slowly learn about Juliette's past -- she was previously married; she was a doctor; her husband testified against her in court -- the more intrigued we become by this ghost of a woman, who appears to have little tolerance for the banalities of everyday life, as if she had been away from them too long to ever function normally again.

Zylberstein, who is beautiful enough to pass for Thomas' real-life sibling, is equally good as a woman trying to make up for 15 years of silence (she never visited Juliette in prison) by surrounding her sister with unconditional love while carefully respecting her privacy, even though she desperately longs to have her questions about the crime answered.

Director Claudel makes you wait until film's end to discover why, exactly, Juliette committed her unspeakable crime, and it's the only disappointing aspect of the movie -- the only time I've Loved You So Long traipses into melodrama. But the rest of this utterly absorbing picture never strikes a false note, even as it negotiates tricky emotional territory with the complexity and depth of a novel. And the last scene is a perfect capper to a profoundly hopeful story about overcoming the past and embracing the here and now: Life is always worth living, as long as you're willing to put some effort into it, no matter how painful the process.

Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius, Laurent Grevill, Lise Segur.

Writer-director: Philippe Claudel.

Producer: Yves Marmion.

A Sony Pictures Classics release. Running time: 115 minutes. In French with English subtitles. In Miami-Dade: Regal South Beach; in Palm Beach: Shadowood.

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