The ending (major spoilers!)

Hi Goat - great to find this thread - I saw it sunday and although i rated it highly and thought KST great I was really hoping it wouldnt be euthenasia - I would have been more interested if she had killed him in a drunken rage or something. You are right - it DOES feel like a plea for sympathy. Like the reference to the Woodsman - although I recall feeling a bit cheated there when Bacon goes on about his big thing loving to smell the hair of his victim(s) - come on - people dont get sent to prison as nonces for hair smelling!!! they commit sexual acts on minors

The other thing that bugged me was the husband - if he REALLY thought KST was a threat to his kids surely he wouldnt have allowed her into the house AT ALL - not just got snippy when Zylberstein wanted to use her as a baby sitter.

nonetheless - probably the best movie of the few I saw last year.

Tell mama, Tell mama all....

I appreciate the writer/director's comments on this subject, posted earlier in this thread. I'll repeat them:

"To make a film about a woman who would have killed her child on an impulse, one moment of madness, a sudden rage is undoubtedly possible and interesting, but this was not my subject: I wanted to speak of an ordinary woman who, has one moment, was placed in front of an extraordinary situation, who made a choice, and who didn't wait that society judge her, but condemned herself, heavily, so she went away from the life, locked up herself in a silence as in most terrible of the punishments."

In my opinion, I think what gives the ending such a "cop out" feel is the way the plot revelations are structured. The writer/director only reveals what he's really exploring in the last five minutes of the film, leaving the viewer no time to take it in and evaluate. Of course, that will happen in a second viewing of the film, but, in my opinion, the choice for a "surprise ending" actually undermines the viewer's ability to travel on Juliette's real journey.

Just sayin'

[deleted]

I just got back from seeing this, and I actually assumed it was a mercy killing from the start. I don't know why, I think it was probably just because of how Juliet behaved - so thumbs up to the actress there.
But I'm not really sure what the intention was with the ending. As in, were we supposed to know it? The movie 'Signs' is an example of this, how it keeps a past event as a mystery, only revealing slightly more each time, even though everyone has long since worked out roughly what happened (and various characters actually tell us a few times). It maintains the mystery not to make it seem like a twist, but to demonstrate the protagonist's coming to terms with what happened.
I thought that may have been the case with this film.
Then again, maybe it was just supposed to be a twist. Or perhaps it was meant to be one of those stories where it can just go either way depending on whether or not you've worked it out.
In whichever case, it just didn't quite hit the mark for me. I'm not fully sure why.
I think it was that the movie was actually /too/ realistic, and because of that (and because I worked out the plot at the start) it didn't really feel like it went anywhere. It was really the sort of story you'd expect to see in a documentary rather than a film.
Most stories are visibly structured and dramatic, but this felt like they'd just found a woman who'd gone through this and sicked hidden cameras on her. I think whether or not that's a good thing is largely a matter of opinion though. So maybe it just wasn't my type of film, because while I certainly wouldn't call it bad, I can't really tell yet if I liked it or not.

One thing I did wish the film explored more though: throughout the whole thing, I was on the fence about Juliet. She seemed like a nice person, and I actually approve of euthanasia (where reasonable, and of a consenting person), but she seemed quite selfish in her actions.
Killing her son with no one's consent or knowledge is just a horrible thing to do. She did it simply because it was hard for /her/ to see him like that. But in this action, she didn't just end her and her son's suffering, she took away her husband's child, her parents' grandchild, her sister's nephew, the girls' future cousin (this really hit me when the older girl mentioned it would be nice to have a cousin), etc.
I just wish it had explored that angle a bit more. That comment by the director mentions how her silence was her punishment, but I think it was her crime as well, to keep all of the boy's loved ones in the dark about what happened.
The way it was shown, it just felt like we were simply supposed to feel sorry for Juliet and leave it at that. I don't know if that was the intention, but that's what I saw in it, and if it was intended differently, I don't personally think it was expressed well enough.
So no, I didn't think the euthanasia ending was a cop-out. I think a simple crime of passion would have been pretty trite actually (though there are many other possible motivations besides these two that could have been interesting). I just don't think the euthanasia concept was explored to anywhere near it's potential.

That's all I can really say right now, I'm seriously nodding off as I type this, lol. There are a few more thoughts I have on it that I just can't seem to articulate at the moment, lol. In fact I think I went off on quite a bit of a tangent there. Oh well.

I completely agree with your opinion psychicgoat, I loved the movie but the ending was a huge cop-out.

I agree. I too thought of "The Woodsman," and I think it was a stronger film and, in many ways, a better film -- it wrestled with a character who really had done something truly despicable. "The Woodsman" is an awesome film, and better in some ways than "I've loved you so long."

Having said that, I think KST's performance is stunning and beautiful, and I loved everyone in the movie, especially the child who played the older daughter. She was just fantastic. The humor was also marvelous. Makes you wonder why Americans just can't capture the light-hearted spirit of life of French movies, even a drama like this. We have to have lots of violence and stupidity in our dramas.

Since the subject is The Ending, I thought the ending was terrific. The movie ended at precisely the right moment, and with a beautiful line of dialogue (which was? "I am here."?). Marvelous.

--
GEORGE
And all's fair in love and war?
MRS. BAILEY
[primly] I don't know about war.

[deleted]

I agree.

The scenario is completely unbelievable. The child was in a public place (The Green House, as I recall) and could barely move. Many people should have noticed. The father and other close relatives should have noticed the child's unbearable pain. As you point out, there would have been an autopsy, especially considering the cause of death (lethal injection). Also, the Iraqi doctor couldn't interpret the test results himself; he needed to consult specialists. Wouldn't Juliette have had to do the same 15 years earlier? Why would she have kept her child's sickness a secret? It doesn't make ANY sense.

The ending is too neat. It makes it too easy to like the Juliette character.

However, I had the opposite reaction. I began to find her loathsome. Some of it was for the reasons above (e.g. failure to consult other doctors to see if her son could be treated), but mainly because of the harm she did to the rest of her family. She had an attitude towards her parents, ex-husband, and even her loyal sister, but what did she expect? She allowed all of them to go on believing that she had murdered her son!! That places too great a demand on unconditional love. That was also her ex-husband's son and her parents' grandson. Juliette allowed her father to go to his grave believing his daughter was guilty of infanticide, with no mitigating circumstances. She allowed her mother to go into senility believing the same thing. Not explaining herself to her loved ones was vicious and callous on Juliette's part. Her anguish over the death of her son was not a sufficient excuse. Her loved ones were also in anguish and deserved an explanation. They too had lost a child/grandchild and Juliette's self-centered cruelty meant they also lost a wife/daughter as well.

And for what? Because Juliette felt responsible for her son's death because it was a genetic disease? How stupid is that? Juliette was a highly educated woman. That excuse is unconvincing, a contrived one-liner to neatly sew up the story at the end.

It didn't work for me.

That said, KST was terrific in the role. I'm a pretty tough guy who's seen a lot of pain and suffering in his time. I never cry at movies. But I'll admit that the revelation scene towards the end where the two sisters are in the bedroom crying in each other's arms had me a little misty eyed. Good stuff.