Let the Sunshine In (2017)
Directed by Claire Denis
Isabelle, Parisian artist, divorced mother, is looking for love, true love, at last.
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What critics compared Let the Sunshine In to
Favoring leatherette minis accompanied by four-inch heels or the thigh-high boots she’s seen struggling her way out of—viewers of Bastards (2013) will recall that Denis is singularly attentive to shoes—Isabelle is perhaps Binoche’s most purely carnal role since that of the bed-hopping Nina in André Téchiné’s Rendez-vous (1985), though the nature of the need that she exudes here, playing a woman some 30 years older, is very different, if no less urgent.
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 .
Indeed, Let the Sunshine In could be argued as a reset for Denis, an amuse-bouche between two meatier courses: 2013’s Bastards, a jumbled noir thriller, and, if it gets off the ground, Denis’ first English-language production, High Life, starring Robert Pattinson and set in space.
After all, the 71-year-old French auteur, whose film Beau Travail remains one of the great works of the last few decades, has taken an especially grim turn as of late, with movies like Bastards , White Material and The Intruder exploring some of the darker sides of contemporary humanity.
(It follows the filmmaker’s darkest, most scalding work so far, 2013’s Bastards , a sinister melding of Faulkner’s Sanctuary and the Sadean sexual appetites of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and other high-ranking French officials.)
Yet quieter fare such as Bastards was just as daring, if only as her first ever foray into digital cinematography.
Claire Denis continues to be nothing less than fascinating with her first film in four years, a far cry from the ultraviolent Bastards.