People don't understand the ending...

I agree with most of your reasoning, but it's largely beside the point. The film seemingly wanted us to examine the mindset of a person insistent on punishing themselves out of grief. To some extent the above minutiae are incidental distractions from that story, and getting too sidetracked by them seems a bit like bemoaning the fact that the animals, the sun and the wind in Aesop's fables can't actually talk in real life, etc, etc.
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I suppose on a clear day you can see the class struggle from here.

Thank you so much for explaining this. I enjoyed the movie, just because Kristin Scott Thomas is such an incredible actress, but at the end I was really banging my head against the wall. In medical terms, this movie made no sense whatsoever!

It reminded me of an old Saturday Night Live sketch, where a couple of guys called themselves "The Mercy Killers" and started going through hospitals at random and killing anyone who looked sick to them!

"Your next challenge is always your biggest." Joe Namath

I understand what you say in your comments about this story with Kristin Scott Thomas, but you have to realise that maybe this movie was not portrayed as a modern one, but in times past where there were not so much knowledge about things, and maybe things were simpler then. Maybe as a doctor she gave a simple explanation as to why she killed her son, and had a hurried autopsy done, as a doctor. Who knows. I think depending on the time depicted, the movie can be credible.

I think you missed a whole lot from the movie.


First of nowhere in the movie you hear that the death of the son was mystery or that his illness unknown to the authorities. The only thing that has been said is that Juliette remained silent, and the sister did not know the reason why she killed her and she did not know of the illness. And you totally missed the part about "the kidnap". She took away her son and god knows for how long she kept him with herself away from the father etc. before killing him that night at the Green House, which easily explains why the father was clueless too and witnessed against her. At the time her sister was probably 10 - 13 and the family totally prohibited any communication with her, even though she would not have shared anything anyhow. She did the tests herself, she has never looked for medical help from outside. That's why it was all secret, to the family and people who knew her, not to the police or the justice system.

Do you think that was an easy decision to make? Even if she thought that was the best way to end her son's life, I am sure it must have been a horrifying and awful thing to do, probably putting her in a state where she couldn't think clear, perhaps a state of shock?

Which I think might have been part of why she didn't say anything in the courtroom, because to her, the whole situation was just too horrible to bear, and so she blamed herself because she couldn't save him and wanted to punish herself. But like some other posters talked about, it's the life after that is important here, the rest is only the background for the story. The important thing explored in the movie is the kind of emotional "jail" the character is in after something horrible happening 15 years back, and how she has to try and break out from it (and try to forgive herself).