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Claire Denis’ loopy, tongue-in-cheek romantic comedy “Let the Sunshine In” stars Juliette Binoche as Isabelle, a contemporary French artist who becomes nearly obsessed with her search for love. Or lust. Whichever is within reach.

Isabelle jumps from one lover’s arms to another’s like there’s hot lava on the floor, and they are her safehaven of dry land. And dry so many of them are. The first is Vincent (actor-filmmaker Xavier Beauvois), a married banker with a jealous streak who negs Isabelle like he took a weekend course from The Pickup Artist. In one scene at a bar, he fills her up with backhanded compliments about how great it is that she feels comfortable doing such frivolous things like making art, while he tasks the bartender with completing arbitrary requests, like setting down a bottle of Perrier in exactly the right way.

Luckily, Isabelle ditches this guy, but she’s not single for long. Another lover — also married — quickly gets under her skin when what begins as an artists’ work meeting turns very personal very quickly. The guy (Nicolas Duvauchelle, Denis’ “White Material”) is an actor and is consistently referred to as simply “L’acteur.” Over the course of a single beer, he delivers an unprompted and seemingly endless monologue about all of his violent fugue states and “bad-boy” tendencies as Isabelle just waits for her turn to talk.

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This multi-scene courtship is painful to watch, because both characters neurotically dance around their attraction to one another in a manner that manifests itself into hostility and anger, and so both won’t shut up, even though they’re not really saying anything at all, until they finally ravage one another, and Isabelle says what I was feeling myself: “God, I thought the talking would never end.”

But L’acteur is no good, either. Isabelle longs for something real but continually seeks out the fiction, the relationship that’s bound to blow up in her face. She’s got a perfectly good choice of a man in Francois (Laurent Grévill, Denis’ “Bastards”), with whom she has a child, but this is a woman whose enemy is perfection; she’s addicted to the beginning of a relationship but instinctively runs at the first sign of trouble, even if the trouble is something she’s manufactured herself. Isabelle is the friend you must convince that every happy couple endures hard times.

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The cracks begin to show in Isabelle’s pleasant façade when she accepts an invitation for a trip into the country. In one pivotal moment, she loses it on an hours-long property tour, screaming and howling for the inane conversation to stop, but nobody seems to care, as they all have a great time later at the bar. She’s mercurial, and this film is as much a statement about the temperament of artists as it is about love. An artist can fly off the handle in rage, and yet her friends think nothing of this emotion, which is sure to be as fleeting as her romances.

The only cardinal sin an artist can commit, according to Isabelle’s artist friends, is being with someone who is not also an artist, who would never understand this impetuous lifestyle. When Isabelle sleeps with a man who sweeps her off her feet at a bar and then has him move in with her, the artist community is in a panic: Has this guy even painted anything before?

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And though Gérard Dépardieu only shows up for the finale of the film, as a psychic truth-teller, he’s the perfect tag to this story, this personal quest of Isabelle’s that shows absolutely no signs of ending anytime soon. Of course she goes to the psychic. Of course she wants him to give her an easy answer (one she will inevitably ignore or contradict after a while anyway), a way to predict the future and cut out the hard parts of learning and growing.

Binoche being in her 50s also brings more meaning to this film, which showcases the fact that the manic search for connection one feels in their 20s doesn’t just disappear with age. There’s no magical time when a person suddenly feels satisfied and does not wonder if possibly there is more to life and love than the day-in, day-out doldrums.

When films are made about straight men in this predicament, they’re often considered explorations of a “midlife crisis,” but Denis’ film poses the questions: What if crises aren’t limited to a certain age, and what if love itself is the crisis?



Read original story ‘Let the Sunshine In’ Film Review: Juliette Binoche Looks for Love With All the Wrong Men At TheWrap...

MaryAnn’s quick take… Juliette Binoche’s search for midlife love is drenched in ennui and punctuated by weary philosophizing. There’s not a lot of satisfaction in it, nor much by way of resolution. Very French. I’m “biast” (pro): I’m desperate for movies about women

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

I have not read the source material

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto) women’s participation in this film

(learn more about this)

Is this my life? I want to find love.” So laments Juliette Binoche (Ghost in the Shell) as Isabelle, a 50something artist in Paris, echoing many a woman of every age. Which is in fact something of a comfort: if a woman of such luminousness, grace, and intelligence can’t find a man, then maybe it’s not us, but them. (Just kidding: We all already know it’s them.

Claire Denis' Bastards (Les Salaudes) may actually have a decent story, but she has muddled up the narrative to the point it's confusing as all hell. Even once the pieces start to come together, the film comes to a head-scratching conclusion of sex with corncobs and a close-up of a guy stroking his penis. Let's begin with the plot details I gathered after the opening moments and see where we get... It's raining very hard. A man has killed himself. A girl is walking naked in the streets. A man named Marco (Vincent Lindon) works aboard a container ship and receives a phone call with a family emergency and heads home immediately. Upon arrival he moves into an apartment without any furnishings. Here he makes eyes at the woman living downstairs and helps fix the chain on her son's bicycle. Following the film's opening minutes, those were the things I knew.

I saw Claire Denis' Bastards (Les Salaudes) in Cannes earlier this year and it has one of my favorite opening paragraphs to a review I've ever written: Claire Denis' The Bastards (Les Salaudes) may actually have a decent story, but she has muddled up the narrative to the point it's confusing as all hell. Even once the pieces start to come together, the film comes to a head-scratching conclusion of sex with corncobs and a close-up of a guy stroking his penis. Today IFC released the first domestic trailer for the film, which they plan on releasing in theaters on October 23 (iTunes on Oct. 25) and in their description they call it a "gripping thriller about money, sex and power" telling the story of "a ship captain returns to Paris to seek vengeance on the man suspected of causing his brother-in-law's suicide." The story seems simple enough, but the...

Revered director Claire Denis brings to the Croisette easily one of her least-accessible jaunts yet with the impenetrable Bastards, an ill-organized revenge tale that unfolds in needlessly incoherent fashion, and despite a rather salacious, sexy premise, fails to get the pulse racing in all other departments. Marco (Vincent Lindon) is one half of the film’s beguiling sibling equation, a man who learns that his brother in law, Jacques (Laurent Grevill) has taken his own life, while niece Justine (Lola Creton) has been taken to hospital after suffering from severe mental trauma. In an attempt to make amends with his estranged sister Sandra (Julie Bataille), Marco moves into the same apartment block as the shady businessman she believes caused Jacques’ suicide, and embarks on an affair with his mistress, Raphalle (Chiara Mastroianni). The full transfixing extent of Denis’ film was made most abundantly clear at the conclusion of the Cannes premiere screening this afternoon, when...

Claire Denis' The Bastards (Les Salaudes) may actually have a decent story, but she has muddled up the narrative to the point it's confusing as all hell. Even once the pieces start to come together, the film comes to a head-scratching conclusion of sex with corncobs and a close-up of a guy stroking his penis. Let's begin with the plot details I gathered after the opening moments and see where we get... It's raining very hard. A man has killed himself. A girl is walking naked in the streets. A man named Marco (Vincent Lindon) works aboard a container ship and receives a phone call with a family emergency and heads home immediately. Upon arrival he moves into an apartment without any furnishings. Here he makes eyes at the woman living downstairs and helps fix the chain on her son's bicycle. Following the film's opening minutes, those were the things I knew.

Enter for a chance to win "I've Loved You So Long" (a.k.a. "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime") on Blu-ray! Take home the Kristin Scott Thomas drama from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The critically acclaimed drama is a winner of a BAFTA Award in the foreign language category, a Golden Globe nominee and has been nominated for many more awards. Also in the cast are Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius, Laurent Grévill, Frédéric Pierrot and Claire Johnston. Enter now! (registered users only). Not registered? Get registered and you receive a 10% voucher to use on each and every purchase* on our DVD and games store! What's it about? Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) and Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) are sisters. Juliette has just been released from prison after serving a long sentence. Léa was still a teenager when Juliette, a doctor, was convicted of the murder of her six-year-old son. Life...

Enter for a chance to win "I've Loved You So Long" (a.k.a. "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime") on DVD! Take home the Kristin Scott Thomas drama from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The critically acclaimed drama is a winner of a BAFTA Award in the foreign language category, a Golden Globe nominee and has been nominated for many more awards. Also in the cast are Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius, Laurent Grévill, Frédéric Pierrot and Claire Johnston. Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) and Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) are sisters. Juliette has just been released from prison after serving a long sentence. Léa was still a teenager when Juliette, a doctor, was convicted of the murder of her six-year-old son. Life together isn’t easy to begin with. Juliette has to relearn certain basics. The world has moved on and she often seems confused. Although she may seem cold and distant,...

Enter for a chance to win "I've Loved You So Long" (a.k.a. "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime") on DVD! Take home the Kristin Scott Thomas drama from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The critically acclaimed drama is a winner of a BAFTA Award in the foreign language category, a Golden Globe nominee and has been nominated for many more awards. Also in the cast are Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius, Laurent Grévill, Frédéric Pierrot and Claire Johnston. Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) and Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) are sisters. Juliette has just been released from prison after serving a long sentence. Léa was still a teenager when Juliette, a doctor, was convicted of the murder of her six-year-old son. Life together isn’t easy to begin with. Juliette has to relearn certain basics. The world has moved on and she often seems confused. Although she may seem cold and distant,...

Seen on: October 22, 2008

The players: Director: Philippe Claudel, Writer: Philippe Claudel, Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein, Laurent Grevill, Serge Hazanavicius, Frederic Pierrot

Facts of interest: French title is "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime."

The plot: For 15 years, Juliette has had no ties with her family who had rejected her. Although life once violently separated them, Lea, her younger sister, takes her into her home, which she shares with her husband Luc, his father, and their two daughters.

Our thoughts: Poor Juliette (Thomas) has been rotting for 15 years in prison for the murder of her 6-year-old child, and is finally released into the care of her loving sister Lea (Zylberstein). Starting here [A], we will move laterally 110 minutes to where we return to the murder and, inexorably, its motivation....