Denis and Binoche have made a film that’s both smart and sexy, imbuing new excitement and wonder into the emotional connections that define us all.
Let the Sunshine In(Un beau soleil intérieur)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
France, Belgium · 2017
1h 34m
Director Claire Denis
Starring Juliette Binoche, Xavier Beauvois, Gérard Depardieu, Josiane Balasko
Genre Comedy, Drama, Romance
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Isabelle, a divorced middle-aged Parisian artist, is in the midst of a precarious relationship with a pretentious married banker, Vincent. However, Isabelle is hardly satisfied, and wishes to find something more rewarding. Thus begins her venturesome search for love and stability in the colorful city of Paris.
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What are critics saying?
The Playlist by Bradley Warren
All in, the film is an unprecedented misfire for Denis.
As slinky as the reflection of a neon sign trailing across the hood of a black sedan, this is a slight movie, shot on a whim just a few months before its world premiere, and it feels cobbled together in its search for some kind of meaning.
Here is a film littered with off-piste humor and featuring a memorable, warm-hearted ending that argues being open to serendipitous new experiences beats comforting certainties in life.
Claire Denis finds the inexorable beauty (and sadness) in that most corrosive and fugacious of feelings.
Perfectly small rather than slight, and radiantly carried by Juliette Binoche — in a light-touch tour de force to be filed alongside her work in Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” — this turns out to be a subtler departure than it outwardly appears for Denis, most evoking her other Parisienne drifting-hearts study, “Friday Night,” in its bittersweet tone.
Bright Sunshine In is a pithily precise portrait of the love life of an artist.
Screen International by Jonathan Romney
Rather than a chic bagatelle, this proves an acutely intelligent, finely acted and – despite its cerebral edge - emotionally rich piece.
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
The film slowly but surely works its charms, painting a rich, emotionally complex portrait of a woman who, like Denis herself, will not let herself be boxed in.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
This is grownup film-making, more savoury than sweet, seductive, oblique and carried by a wonderfully smart and emotionally generous performance from Juliette Binoche – who delivers the material superbly, material which from almost anyone else would sound dyspeptic or absurd.
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