“It’s not the despair. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand,” says John Cleese’s character Brian Stimpson in the mostly-forgotten 1986 British comedy Clockwise. It’s a line that could have been written for the heartsick protagonist of Let The Sunshine In, Claire Denis’s unconventional rom-com that concerns itself with the agony and humiliation of trying to find true love.
Yes, there is misery and angst here in abundance, but Denis never quite lets it overwhelm either her heroine (played by Juliette Binoche) or the film itself. Hope somehow abides… for all the good it will do.
Boorish Banker
In her first collaboration with veteran auteur Denis, Binoche is divorced mother Isabelle, a Parisian artist who struggles to form a lasting or meaningful bond with any of her potential suitors. This parade of amorous ne’er-do-wells includes boorish banker Vincent (Xavier Beauvois), who tells her: “You are charming, but my wife is extraordinary”, a mercurial unnamed actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle), and ageing pretty boy Sylvain (a perfectly pouty Paul Blain).
There isn’t really a plot as such, just loosely connected scenes in which Isabelle invariably gets involved in, consummates, then retreats from, various romantic entanglements, including one with her ex-husband, François (Laurent Grévill).
Written by Denis, in partnership with controversial French author Christine Angot, on the surface this is a real change of pace for the director, especially after her last feature, the excoriating and brutal sexual abuse drama Bastards. But despite plenty of moments both comedic and farcical, Let The Sunshine In contains a world of sadness. From the lonely gent at the local fish shop desperate for Isabelle’s company, to Isabelle’s miserable-looking young daughter, and the principle character herself, who we’re told “cries almost every night”, no one is having a good time.
Isabelle’s various boyfriends are all similarly anguished. The appalling Vincent hates being a banker (“My job is alienating”), while The Actor is a smorgasbord of neuroses and emotional conflicts. Love is pain and opening yourself up to its possibilities a thankless task guaranteed to end in heartbreak and despair. Our flawed heroine persists regardless, still hoping, still searching. I don’t know whether you’d call it admirable or deeply naïve.
Frightened of Happiness
Denis’ films are often unconcerned with storytelling niceties, more with tone, character, and the feel of the thing. And so it goes here. Let The Sunshine In is a rom-com in as much as it contains romantic situations and funny lines, but Denis subverts the genre every chance she gets. Characters appear and disappear, situations are left hanging, motivations unexplained. The closest her film strays to a mainstream moment is in a terrific dance scene when Isabelle first meets Sylvain.
The pair make a connection immediately and sashay sensuously to Etta James’s uplifting ‘At Last’ in a sequence straight out of the Richard Curtis playbook. As James’ voice swells in the background, you are invited to wonder if Isabelle has finally found “The One”. Of course, she’s done no such thing.
It’s almost as if Isabelle is frightened of happiness. She sabotages her relationships every bit as often as the men in her life walk away or play her for a fool. She appears content with the uncomplicated Sylvain until a supposed male friend – who has designs on her himself – convinces Isabelle the pair’s different interests and backgrounds will cause problems further down the line. She seeks something perfect, but, despite being in her fifties, seems puzzlingly unaware that no such thing truly exists. Isabelle is a worldly woman yet conducts her romantic liaisons with all the maturity and guile of a 17-year-old.
Her sex life is similarly moribund. When we first see Isabelle, she is making love with Vincent, but isn’t enjoying it. She urges him to finish and gets angry when he takes too long. Their amour ends with her slapping him around the face. In bed with her former husband, she berates him for doing something “unnatural” (I’ll spare you the details). The one time in Let The Sunshine In she seems to have been properly fulfilled sexually – by The Actor – we immediately cut to the next scene where he asks her: “If we see each other again, can we not make love?” No wonder she’s in tears so often and confides to a friend: “It’s like my love life is behind me.”
Self-absorbed and Listless
It’s been a strange few years for Binoche, who, on her day, remains one of European cinema’s brightest lights. She was wasted in Hollywood blockbuster guff such as Godzilla (2014) and Ghost In The Shell (2017), upstaged by Kristin Stewart in Clouds Of Sils Maria (2014), and chewed the scenery rather too enthusiastically in Bruno Dumont’s grotesque black comedy Slack Bay (2016).
Thankfully, the 1996 Oscar winner (Best Supporting Actress for The English Patient) is back to something approaching her best here as a woman who is as sympathetic and beguiling as she is frustrating. Denis clearly adores Binoche, offering close up after close up of the 54-year-old actress’s face and body right from the film’s startling first shot.
It is somewhat difficult to accept someone as effervescently gorgeous and interesting as Isabelle as a serial loser in love, but Binoche imbues her with just the right amount of ennui and vulnerability to make us believe in her, although rooting for a character who is often so self-absorbed and listless (she constantly complains of tiredness, despite doing very little) is somewhat harder. On Sunshine‘s movie poster Binoche appears radiant: a picture of tranquillity and inner calm, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. She’s an emotional train-wreck, in one genuinely affecting scene sobbing and pleading: “I want to find a love… one true love.”
Music frequently plays a crucial role in Denis’s films, exemplified by Beau Travail (1999), which expertly mixed a Tindersticks score, excerpts from Benjamin Britten opera ‘Billy Budd’ and Corona’s catchy dance hit ‘The Rhythm Of The Night’ to powerful effect. Nothing so ambitious is attempted here but ‘At Last’ is the movie’s signature song and appears at various points as Isabelle goes from one failed dalliance to the next. Denis uses the tune in both an ironic and hopeful way.
It plays in the background as Isabelle’s relationship with Vincent breathes its last and again, later, when she meets Sylvain for the first time. Isabelle even has a picture of Etta James prominently displayed on the wall of her apartment, as if the R&B queen were a divine figure to be prayed to for inspiration and romantic good fortune.
Denis and Angot clearly had a ball writing the screenplay, especially the character of Vincent, who is an unreconstructed, 24-carat bastard. They give him all the best lines, whether vulgar (“I just got in from Brazil and felt like banging you”) or simply unsympathetic (“Crying is for maids and monkeys”). There’s also a cringe-inducing scene in which he bullies a handsome young barman just because he can, and another in his opulent apartment when our gaze is drawn to a bloody painting on his wall that looks like evidence from a murder scene.
He’s a brutish character, brought to rude, rasping life by Beauvois and Let The Sunshine In wouldn’t be the same without him. The same could be said for Gérard Depardieu – who has certainly played one or two Vincent types in his time. He is on subtler form here in an excellent extended cameo that plays over the movie’s end titles, as a manipulative clairvoyant perhaps every bit as lovelorn as Isabelle. Could the pair have a future together? You wouldn’t bet on it.
Let The Sunshine In: Conclusion
Now in her seventies, Denis is perhaps at the height of her powers, her film projects never more diverse, challenging, or intriguing. Of her movies so far this decade, Bastards demonstrated she can do hard-bitten Hollywood-style thrillers with the best of them, while Let The Sunshine In‘s lighter moments will surely surprise fans first attracted to her work by Trouble Every Day (2001) or Beau Travail. High Life, her forthcoming sci-fi project starring Binoche again and Robert Pattinson (who has called Denis the most “authentic punk he has ever met”), marks another unexpected but welcome step in her evolution as a filmmaker.
What is your favourite film starring Juliette Binoche? Let us know in the comments below.
Let The Sunshine In is now on limited release in US and UK cinemas. Check here for worldwide release dates.
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