Let the Sun­shine In

A white back­drop sta­pled to a floor, filmed from a high angle; on it crouch­es Isabelle (Juli­ette Binoche), a Paris-based abstract painter. Brush and palette in hand, she begins to move around, fill­ing in the space beneath her feet. The shot inge­nious­ly posi­tions Isabelle as author and sub­ject. The can­vas pulls dou­ble duty as her frame and ours. It offers a glimpse of a cre­ative process that is serene­ly yet mad­den­ing­ly enig­mat­ic. Are these slow, lan­guorous, black-on-white strokes planned, or extem­po­ra­ne­ous? Or, put anoth­er way: does Isabelle already see the big­ger pic­ture, or is she just mak­ing it up as she goes along?

Let the Sun­shine In is very much the prover­bial por­trait of the artist, as well as of an artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty, mark­ing the first time that direc­tor Claire Denis has explic­it­ly dealt with cre­ativ­i­ty as a theme (not count­ing her doc­u­men­tary por­traits of her men­tor Jacques Riv­ette and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Mathilde Mon­nier). It’s also, at least super­fi­cial­ly, a roman­tic com­e­dy, track­ing Isabelle – who is 50, divorced, and shar­ing cus­tody of a 10-year-old daugh­ter – through a series of trou­bled rela­tion­ships and sex­u­al encoun­ters with men in what is referred to insis­tent­ly (by one of her suit­ors, a snide gallery own­er played by Bruno Poda­ly­des) as her ​“milieu”. The com­mon denom­i­na­tor between her part­ners, who include a banker, an actor and a cura­tor, as well as her evi­dent­ly art­sy ex-hus­band, is a well-heeled snob­bish­ness and solip­sism that extends, by action and impli­ca­tion, to Isabelle herself.

It is in this unshowy, unspar­ing exam­i­na­tion of class and social sta­tus that Let the Sun­shine In shows its hand. In 2013’s Bas­tards, Denis railed against late cap­i­tal­ist mon­sters whose deep pock­ets sub­sidised bot­tom­less­ly depraved appetites. Now, work­ing in what seems to be a lighter mode, she con­tin­ues her project. When Isabelle explains to a female friend that she was only able to come dur­ing sex with one well-monied lover by focus­ing on her dis­gust for every­thing he rep­re­sent­ed, it’s a star­tling, hilar­i­ous, lac­er­at­ing moment.

The word she repeats in her sto­ry, over and over, is ​“bas­tard”, explain­ing how nam­ing him as such (to her­self) is what allowed her to get off: it’s a put-down that’s also a con­fes­sion. Con­verse­ly, after hook­ing up with a man from out­side her cir­cle – the first tru­ly roman­tic fig­ure in the film, her­ald­ed by an Etta James sound­track cue – Isabelle is coerced into doubt by a col­league who acid­ly asks if her new part­ner is on ​“wel­fare”. Lat­er, she par­rots this same con­de­scen­sion at her lover, whose response is dev­as­tat­ing­ly sad.

Denis isn’t sim­ply mak­ing a movie about the dif­fi­cul­ties – both exter­nal­ly imposed and dredged up from with­in in response – for women on or past the thresh­old of mid­dle age to find, reclaim, or ful­ly dis­avow ​“true love”, which is itself a rich and orig­i­nal theme. She sub­jects her hero­ine (and, some might sug­gest, pro­ject­ed alter ego) to an analy­sis of how and why she makes her choic­es. In a less­er movie, it would sim­ply be a case of grotesque men lined up unap­petis­ing­ly in front of a woman who deserves bet­ter, even if we know it and she doesn’t.

Yet in writ­ing, direc­tion and act­ing (Binoche is as good here as she’s ever been), Let the Sun­shine In is con­sid­er­ably more com­plex, and less flat­ter­ing, both to its audi­ence and the char­ac­ter. Isabelle’s plight is cir­cum­stan­tial and self-willed: the film’s fun­ni­est and most cathar­ti­cal­ly sur­pris­ing moment takes place dur­ing a group walk in the woods and involves a leather-lunged rejec­tion of her peers’ enti­tled largesse, which also con­tra­dicts her own pro­fes­sion­al aspi­ra­tions. Where a Michael Haneke would be cru­el (and prob­a­bly cast Isabelle Hup­pert to play up the character’s self-destruc­tive ten­den­cies), Denis, who can also some­times be strin­gent to the point of acid­i­ty, plays fair, and also funny.

On this point: after two view­ings, I’m still not quite sure what to make of the film’s bizarre and quite hilar­i­ous extend­ed coda. This finds Isabelle – stung by yet anoth­er break-up and seem­ing­ly at her wits’ end – solic­it­ing the advice of a self-styled psy­chic (played, amaz­ing­ly, in bull-necked close-up by Gérard Depar­dieu). Lulled by his pat­ter and promis­es of bet­ter things to come, she absorbs dubi­ous advice with what might be a flake’s naïveté́ or else the relief of some­body allow­ing her­self at last to be guid­ed down a dif­fer­ent path. (“Be open,” he tells her, sly­ly echo­ing the radio broad­cast in Denis’ Ven­dre­di Soir that com­pels Valérie Lemercier’s char­ac­ter to o er a ride to a stranger en route to a one-night stand).

If it’s hard to rec­on­cile the ner­vous­ly smil­ing, def­er­en­tial woman in the final sequence with the dri­ven, con dent artist seen ear­li­er, the shift fits Denis and co-writer Chris­tine Angot’s dar­ing­ly elas­tic approach to char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. And, tak­en from the right angle, it per­mits the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a hap­py end­ing after all.