Let the Sun­shine In – first look review

Juli­ette Binoche’s eyes are the win­dow to the soul of Let The Sun­shine In, the twelfth fea­ture film by the French direc­tor Claire Denis. Specif­i­cal­ly, it’s the way those eyes respond to the words flung at her from a carousel of male com­pan­ions who appear before her char­ac­ter over the course of this sur­prise rom-com.

Mat­ters begin with Binoche’s Isabelle lying naked beneath mar­ried banker Vin­cent (Xavier Beau­vois), a sex­u­al­ly enti­tled bear-of-a-man. Lat­er, with­out prompt, he tells Isabelle that he will nev­er leave his wife for her, because although she is charm­ing, his wife is extra­or­di­nary. Isabelle lis­tens to his utter­ances, and those of many oth­ers, with con­tained absorp­tion. Her liq­uid brown eyes gaze at her coterie of lovers or would-be para­mours with a mys­te­ri­ous brew of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, scep­ti­cism and intrigue.

Con­ver­sa­tions unfold with the unpre­dictable ener­gy of spon­ta­neous life. A recur­ring dynam­ic, spiced dif­fer­ent­ly accord­ing to the part­ner, goes like this: he deliv­ers an eccen­tric spiel hint­ing at hid­den desires, issues and the size of his ego; there is a pause as Isabelle and the audi­ence try to decode what has been said; then she answers in such a way that spins the con­ver­sa­tion into a new dimen­sion. Denis directs her actors to find the nat­ur­al pulse of encoun­ters. Each is made inti­mate by its speci­fici­ty, and each made sen­su­al by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of romance.

The sec­ond man (of sev­en) is a foxy and self-involved the­atre actor. Isabelle, an artist, is sur­prised when a meet­ing to dis­cuss a project begins with him offload­ing a slew of loaded per­son­al rev­e­la­tions while knock­ing back beers. Lat­er, in his car out­side her apart­ment, they have a pas­sion­ate­ly non­sen­si­cal debate about whether he should come up. Isabelle’s hand is glued to the car door han­dle. Even so, she can’t pull it. These two adults have the air of chil­dren unable to turn away from a new adven­ture. In Denis’ sophis­ti­cat­ed hands, the done-to-death sce­nario of char­ac­ters decid­ing whether to suc­cumb to sex­u­al mag­net­ism has the chaot­ic integri­ty of life itself.

Let The Sun­shine In checks in with Isabelle at a time when she is unusu­al­ly free, hav­ing just sep­a­rat­ed from her ador­ing hus­band, François. (He crops up to be the butt of some tragi­com­ic sex­u­al feed­back.) Loose from the leash of monogamy, Isabelle explores the inti­mate sce­nar­ios avail­able to her with a gung-ho lack of dis­cern­ment. Binoche is the gamest dame of French cin­e­ma and wears short skirts, cleav­age skim­ming tops and per­ma­nent heels as if the chis­elled cream of her beau­ty required the help of seduc­tive clobber.

Co-writ­ten by French play­wright and nov­el­ist Chris­tine Angot (a friend Denis has col­lab­o­rat­ed with before), the script skew­ers manip­u­la­tive men long before Isabelle notices any­thing oth­er than the imme­di­ate heat of the moment. The most trans­par­ent exam­ple of devi­ous­ness is when Isabelle’s cura­tor friend demeans her new work­ing class lover, say­ing that she needs to be with some­one from her own cul­tur­al milieu. It’s an ugly and com­plex scene that sim­mers with jeal­ousy mas­querad­ing as concern.

There have been mur­mur­ings of increduli­ty that Claire Denis – mae­stro of polit­i­cal­ly res­o­nant, atmos­pher­i­cal­ly intense dra­mas – has turned around a chip­per roman­tic farce at time when most were antic­i­pat­ing her Robert-Pat­tin­son-in-space dra­ma, High Life. Yes, the genre trap­pings are lighter this time, but Let The Sun­shine In is far from a rein­ven­tion of her usu­al pierc­ing art. Under­ly­ing the hi-jinx is a shrewd­ly observed depic­tion of the way goal-ori­ent­ed sex­u­al con­querors manip­u­late their more ingen­u­ous mates. Denis, rad­i­cal as ever, is too world­ly to set­tle her tone around soap­box­ing over bit­ter­ness or disappointment.

This may be a film that wry­ly notes the wiles of male oppor­tunists, but in its soul it is Isabelle’s film, and she is a pro­found char­ac­ter who only deep­ens with each painful ending.