Mark Reviews Movies: LET THE SUNSHINE IN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 10, 2018

Will Isabelle (Juliette Binoche) ever find happiness? One could say that's the central question of Let the Sunshine In, but such a question is loaded in a few ways. It suggests that happiness is simply something into which people fall. It implies that a person is merely a passive tool of fate. It makes us think of some long, difficult search in places and for people unknown. If you look at life as a constant search for the one thing or person that will make you happier than any other thing or person, well, the world is too full of things and people for a single person to discover in one lifetime.

There's a better question: Will Isabelle, the indecisive and constantly lovelorn protagonist of co-writer/director Claire Denis's film, ever allow herself to be happy? To be fair, she's happy often throughout the film, but such emotion is always fleeting. It'll be a hard-fought-for sexual tryst or a sensual dance with a stranger or a moment in which she simply cannot resist taking the hand a man she's known for some time.

Such encounters are the stuff of life for Isabelle, and it seems that her life has gotten to the point that she is only searching for these moments. They come and, more importantly, go. Sometimes they're gone because the man reveals himself as someone unworthy of her affection, and sometimes it's because she sabotages what might have resulted from those moments of ecstatic promise.

Isabelle, an artist living in Paris, is complicated, to say the least, and Denis and Christine Angot's screenplay (based on the book by Roland Barthes) has a sharp focus on the moments that matter most for the character—those transitory scenes of her relationships with men. The film is structured as a series of vignettes of initial promise and ultimate heartbreak. At one point, Isabelle ends up in a relationship with a man for a few weeks, but we see none of the in-between scenes. She meets the man, and the next time we see him, she has decided that their romance is impossible.

The decision wasn't really hers, though. It came from the silver tongue of another man, who clearly wants to be with her. Whether she wants to be with him is inconsequential. He gives Isabelle exactly what she needs to end the relationship, to move on, and to keep going with her seemingly never-ending search for a happiness that we're never certain she actually wants.

The men here include Vincent (Xavier Beauvois), a married banker who refuses to leave his wife, and an actor (played by Nicolas Duvauchelle), who's also married. The actor tells Isabelle that he does plan on leaving his wife. The wife simply doesn't know that fact. At the start, it appears as if Isabelle is drawn to such warning signs. Alone in her apartment and upset after some argument with Vincent, she decries her status as a "backstreet lover" and wonders if she'll ever find true love. It's telling that the next stop on her search for love is the actor.

She herself is divorced from François (Laurent Grévill), whom at least one of Isabelle's friends says is a good man. We can believe the friend, and there's little evidence as to why the marriage failed. Isabelle says it's because they grew depressed within the marriage. When the two reunite to have sex, though, she ends their attempted reconciliation because he makes a single gesture in bed that she believes "unnatural" to his character. By this point, we understand that, in some way, Isabelle is as responsible for her lack of happiness as some of the caddish men she chooses as partners. Aren't those choices, though, at least partly on her, too?

The most promising man here is Sylvain (Paul Blain), who appears at a club and whisks her away for a long dance to Etta James' "At Last." What happens to that relationship shows how easily Isabelle is swayed by in-the-moment concerns, as Fabrice (Bruno Podalydès), an art gallery owner who doesn't hide his attraction to her, convinces Isabelle that Sylvain is wrong for her because he's not of her "milieu." The scene comes shortly after Isabelle makes a very public display of her loathing for the snobbish attitude of her crowd. Any excuse to end a romance, it seems, is a good one for Isabelle.

The film doesn't judge Isabelle for her poor choices and her way of sabotaging what could be a lasting romance. It definitely recognizes her faults, though, and looks upon her with an air of sympathy. Binoche's performance is equal parts vulnerable and mercurial. She's essentially playing the charming lead of a romantic comedy but in such a way that we alternately commiserate with her plight, pity her lack of self-awareness, and wish that she'd realize her troubles are almost entirely self-created.

Will Isabelle find happiness or allow herself to be happy? Denis wisely leaves that an open question. Let the Sunshine In ends with a lengthy scene with a clairvoyant (played by Gérard Depardieu), who, in an earlier scene, shows that he might be the last person from whom Isabelle should seek romantic advice. As the end credits roll over their discussion (a neat trick, which suggests that, while our involvement in Isabelle's quest for love may be finished, the search itself will continue), the talk is of fate and chance and unseen, future promises. The odds, sadly, don't look too good.

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