Let the Sunshine In (2018)

I paid to see this-because of the strong cast, I suppose. Never before were sex scenes in a French film unintendedly alienating. Avoid it!

Isabelle, Parisian artist, divorced mother, is looking for love, true love at last. Despite Juliette Benoche's efforts which for the most part were successful 'Un Beau Soleil Interieur' is a very disappointing and dull drama that even an excellent actress like herself couldn't save it from being an absolute boredom and waste of time. Her character literally jumps from man to man until she finds true love but the way it happens it's so poorly made that it's embarrasing as for the rest of the cast? They were mostly forgettable to say the least and basically nothing was happening in general since the film was super boring and the pacing just super slow. It's a shame that such an actress was involved.

I must confess I didn't make it through the movie and this is something that rarely happens to me. It was so meaningless and boring that I felt like it was kicking the will to live out of me. The main character completely lacks a sense of self respect. I wondered why the movie is promoted as a woman's search for love when all she's doing (at least during the first half of the movie) is having sex with married men, some of whom she doesn't even like. She doesn't really communicate with anyone and there is no real exchange with any of the people in her life. The characters talk but they really say nothing to each other, they just think incoherent thoughts out loud. I felt so drained I just had to stop watching, I wasn't even curious to see what happens in the end.

"Un beau soleil intérieur" or "Let the Sun Shine In" or "Bright Sunshine In" or "Dark Glasses" is a French/Belgian co-production in the French language released this year in 2017 and it is the newest work by experienced writer and director Claire Denis. The film runs for slightly over 90 minutes and this also includes closing credits as they interestingly enough were displayed already during the final scene. But we will get to that later. The heart and soul of the film is French Oscar-winning actress Jukliette Binoche, in her 50s now already, but still pretty stunning. The entire film is basically about encounters she has with men, most of them sexual, except the one guy talking to her at the fish shop, the needy one. But everybody else she somehow ends up in bed with while according to the movie she is looking for real true love. But she is definitely also a bit on the promiscuous side and the ways in which we see how desperate she really is are perhaps not enough to hide that, like the crying scenes or the way in which she talks to the Black fella near the end. But maybe my problem with this movie is also how very unlikable all the protagonists are really. Maybe they are just flawed like everybody else, but is that really justification enough? The one hitting rock-bottom is definitely the married guy we see during this long bar scene, perhaps the least likable film character from 2017. We also see him in the very first scene of the film, a sex scene with Binoche's breasts visible and you could think that she lays her innermost out there and it could have been a good start for a great movie. Too bad it is never a great film. Binoche still looks really good for her age and this may be the only amazing component.Now I want to say a couple words in detail about the final scene. First of all, the credits did not really take anything away from it for me. The only result is that you obviously won't check for the names, but then again you don't otherwise either do you? Finally having Depardieu and Binoche hand it to each other eventually could have been one of the finest film scenes of the year, but it really is no such thing. It is all about Depardieu here, never about Binoche as she is basically just listening. As we don't see Depardieu before except in this very short random car scene, I was quite surprised about his inclusion. It felt very random and the scene is really all about the actor, never about the characters. Such a shame as I like Depardieu and Binoche really a lot and I so so wanted this to be better. Back to the entire film, there were some audience members who laughed a great deal from start to finish in my viewing, but I personally must say the comedy component here was minimal to me. It felt way more about the relationship drama and the protagonists longing for and lack of romantic happiness in her life. Still quotes and reactions felt extremely unauthentic on many occasions, which is why I must say that the characters' actions and reactions made no sense on more than just a few occasions. And this is a negative deal breaker in my opinion. I would not say that the performers were bad or anything, actually they elevated the material at times even, but they can only be as good as the script they are given. And what they were given here was most of the time the opposite of quietly captivating, namely over-the-top and unrealistic. I quite like Binoche (and Depardieu), but this was a really big downer as a whole. Pretty disappointed here and being one myself I cannot even recommend it to Binoche's fans as they will maybe dislike it as much as I did. It is nowhere near real failure territory, but it's also nowhere near being among the better or even best French films from 2017. A country I love in terms of filmmaking. But this one here is the negative example potentially confirming the rule. Go check it out.