MovieChat Forums > Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (2009) Discussion > People don't understand the ending...

People don't understand the ending...

posted 16 years ago by yappyfan
28 replies | jump to latest

Initially, I was infuriated by the ending and saw it as implausible. (I guess I that's what you get when you watch too many episodes of "Law and Order.") Then I read some of the comments by the director and grasped what he was trying to do.

The reality is, the mother was deliberately condemning herself to a prison sentence, both in the jail and inside her head. She was sentencing herself, independent of what happened, by her silence and through her actions.

Think about it. Had she euthanized her son and let everyone know, they may have let her off, but it would have done nothing to absolve her of the guilt and pain she was feeling inside. So she condemned herself.

The whole movie is about her life AFTER prison, but it makes the point that even though she has been released, she is still imprisoned. The performance conveys this throughout.

I'm not very good at explaining this, but I have to give the director a lot of credit for coming up with something different and subtle.

What a great movie.

[–] janus3 13 years ago

that was my initial thoughts of the film. glad my hunch was right. i loved kst's acting in the final scenes. wow, so powerful and emotional.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] HornyDonkey 13 years ago

Yeah, what a bummer. Despite the medical inconsistency, the mercy killing makes this movie really weak. I was hoping for a grittier fact about why she killed her son (or the actual cause of the son's death). Some stupid accidents like the ones you proposed would have worked wonder.

[–] smoke0 13 years ago

I was concerned all along with the exact circumstances of the boy's death, and assumed it was a situation the mother had created for which she could actually be held responsible and be viewed as reprehensible and unforgivable by her own family. To find out that the death was actually a mercy killing totally ruined any credibility and power the film had for me up to that point. After all that angst, I just couldn't buy it.

Revenge is a dish that best goes stale.

[–] galluslass 12 years ago

Agree with Y On . This movie was gripping but the end did let it down a bit. Her killing him by some kind of accident and taking the blame to punish herself or due to some kind of depression or mental illness would have been more plausible. Totally understand that she wanted to go to prison to punish herself but if she hid the child's illness from her husband and family then she was punishing them as well. Their grief over losing the child and her by her actions would have been much easier for them to come to terms with if the illness etc had been revealed rather than thinking she had just killed him. Wish they had cleared that part up, whether the husband and family know of the child's illness.

[–] munroe-9 13 years ago

Still a cop-out. I get your point here, but this is a classic case of *beep* with the audience" in that the true story only comes out in the last 15 minutes of the film, totally changing how we feel about her. In other words, a Big Reveal. It might as well be M. Night Shamayalan "I see Dead People." Especially because we have some false leads, e.g., how she yells at her niece early on.

I was really trying to understand this multidimensional woman and what made her a killer. Then the true was a Lifetime movie tear-jerker. Lame.

SO....your points about the story and the woman's true dilemma, OK, valid. But the whole presentation for a screenplay was insulting and totally undid any complex character work IMHO.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] mark-1589 10 years ago

We got a hint earlier in the film when the social worker says she read the transcripts of her trial and upbraids her for not saying ANYTHING at all at in her own defense.