Let the Sunshine In
Un beau soleil intérieur
Bright Sunshine In

Juliette Binoche has been captivating A-list filmmakers and international audiences since the mid-1980s with a diverse range of richly drawn characters. Over the course of more than sixty films, she has embodied subtleties of behavior that invite us to contemplate our own internal workings—how our own fears, desires, joys, and regrets influence the way we consciously and unconsciously present ourselves in the world. A luminous beauty with a mesmerizing screen presence, Binoche makes even the most enigmatic individuals accessible, sympathetic, and fascinating. She is the ideal choice to play Isabelle in Claire Denis’s light, but by no means lightweight, romantic exploration, Un beau soleil intérieur (American title: Let The Sunshine In).

This film marks the first collaboration between Binoche and her compatriot Denis—whose perspicacious début feature Chocolat (1988) exists in the opposite corner of “art-house cinema” from the faux-French confection Chocolat (2000) in which Binoche starred.  As its title suggests, Un beau soleil intérieur is a far warmer and sunnier movie than we might expect from the acclaimed writer/director of such stark pictures as The Intruder (2004), 35 Shots of Rum (2008), and White Material (2009)—to name some of Denis’s most well-known recent works. 

The film’s premise sounds ripe for a farcical romantic comedy: a divorced artist in her mid-forties negotiates the pains, pleasures, liberties, and embarrassments of the French, upscale, middle-aged dating scene.  Though indeed a romcom, Un beau soleil intérieur is in no way a farce. Denis grounds the story in realism, as she does her other pictures, and Binoche creates a substantive, recognizable character who is both flawed and endearing 

The story follows Isabelle from one romantic or post-romantic encounter to the next, with little in the way of traditional narrative momentum. Yet the movie never comes off as rudderless or unfocused. On the contrary, this perceptive character study always builds its central action on while lies behind the exchange of words. We watch Isabelle flirt, argue, advance on, and retreat from several lovers, potential lovers, and past lovers. At first, none of these men seems worthy of her, but soon we come to question if she merits the type of idealized mate she’s naively searching for. In the hands of a less-skilled filmmaker and actress, we might lose patience with Isabelle and dismiss her as a simple neurotic. Instead, Denis and Binoche call into question the reductive, misogynistic nature of that term. They invite us to see the universality in one woman’s imperfect search for the perfect love.