I suspect that you’re right. Presumably they would have done an autopsy, found the problem, considered the mother’s medical background and then tried her for euthanasia rather than first degree murder.

I think the story up until the end was so perfectly constructed in terms of emotions that anything less than her actually murdering her child is a cop out and a betrayal.

(So, yes, to some extent the film was analyzing me.)

When the revelation came I was gobsmacked. In terms of the script, okay, her behaviour throughout was consistent and psychologically truthful. The dénouement was cleverly worked into the action so that we saw what happened to the child rather than just being told about it. The storytelling was true to its visual medium.

But outside the film, in real life – would a mother have been sent down for 15 years for what, in effect, was a mercy killing, however silent she was at her trial? And would her family have been ignorant of the dead child’s terminal illness?

I didn’t believe they would.

I have never seen a compelling emotional narrative turn so quickly into nothing through sheer ineptitude. I have never felt so tricked in a cinema. The brilliance of what went before made the reversal all the more shocking. Sorry – you can’t do that to an audience.

I think that’s quite possible. One of my favourite films of recent years is The Woodsman and that is a film that never forgets even for an instant that the central character is a scumbag child molester and yet it is capable of partially redeeming him.

I’ve Loved You So Long goes for the redemption but there’s nothing to redeem. Hence the suspicion that actual the target of the ‘analysis’ is not Juliette, but the audience that is quick to think “oooh… terrible woman”.

So I don’t know if I’m regretting that this wasn’t a completely different film but there’s still the feeling that the film’s central character gets off far too easily and, frankly, if they wanted to make a film about people’s hysterical reaction to certain crimes then there are better ways of going about it.