Let the Sunshine In / Un beau soleil intérieur

Vnútorné slnko

fiction / 2017 / France / col. / 94 min.

Director: Claire Denis
Screenplay: Claire Denis, Christine Angot
Photography: Agnès Godard
Editor: Guy Lecorne
Music: Stuart Staples
Cast: Juliette Binoche, Xavier Beauvois, Philippe Katerine, Josiane Balasko, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Gérard Depardieu, Claire Tran

Four years on, Claire Denis returned to the Cannes festival with a film that might have been described as a melodrama or romantic comedy if she hadn’t, of course, refuted or deftly overturned all the clichés associated with these genres. The premise is simple: Divorced artist Isabelle, played by the enchanting Juliette Binoche, is looking for true love, but she tends to place her hopes in men who hardly measure up to this ideal. With a panache all her own, the director doesn’t regale us with a fluid story, but instead reveals the most eloquent episodes from Isabelle’s life. These she pieces together to form the personality of an indecisive, neurotic, yet irresistibly charming woman who, only right at the very end, reveals to the viewer her guide to finding The One. They say we’re not supposed to leave the theatre before the credits role and, in the case of Let the Sunshine In, this is doubly true. (source: Karlovy Vary IFF)