Let the Sunshine In

LET THE SUNSHINE IN   ***1/2

Claire Denis

2017

IDEA:  A middle-aged woman cycles through a series of suitors seeking elusive satisfaction in love.

BLURB:  Based on its plot alone, one would have every reason to expect Let the Sunshine In to be another superfluous, banal film about romantic malaise. And yet, Denis and an utterly luminescent Binoche turn it into something unassumingly fresh, wise, and elating: a portrait of midlife loneliness rich in intimate emotional texture, and attuned equally to the satisfactions and frustrations of desire. While that last point keeps the film consistent with much of the director’s oeuvre, Denis forgoes her typically oblique style for something much more modestly straightforward, to refreshing effect. The resulting film is light without being trifling, casual in a way that seems effortless, but betraying a keen sense for the affects of longing, romantic confusion, vulnerability, and dissatisfaction. None of it would work without the supernova-level power of Binoche at its center. Radiantly eager and then self-sabotaging in a maddening back-and-forth with herself, her Isabelle is a woman who dives quixotically into bad relationships, hoping for something that can never be fulfilled. Denis knows that much of the pleasure is in the pursuit, even when the pursuit takes on such a foolhardy, masochistic form. She also knows that the desire that impels Isabelle will never be fully sated. In an ingenious ending that lifts Let the Sunshine In into gentle transcendence, Denis prematurely rolls the credits over a conversation between two lost souls, grasping for some solace. The credits end, but the film stubbornly persists, as if it has itself absorbed the meaning of the last spoken word: “open.”