Mjeteconer
Just perfect...
Platicsco
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
Hattie
I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.
maurice yacowar
By now we expect a Clare Dennis movie to be a stylish, incisive anatomy of French cultural or political traditions (aka cliches). Here she deploys romance queen Juliette Binoche as a passionate beauty moving relentlessly through a series of unfulfilling affairs.
Isabelle is a successful painter, specifically an abstract expressionist. In the one work we see she splashes broad black strokes across a floored white canvas, hoping her sweeping slashes will discover and express a passion she has nowhere - or no-one - else for it to go. She seeks in that formless chaos a meaning and beauty in revolt against traditional orderliness. But we see her painting only once. So she seems to be playing at the role of the romantic artist - and in an obsolete genre at that.
That's in love as in her art. In her search for someone in whom to invest her ardor she chooses poorly - the selfish, insulting married banker, the equally shallow married actor, the comically silent and vulpine labourer she meets in a dance. Her conversations are a cover under which she hides, hoping to pounce on the one physical connection that will sustain and absolve her.
At first Isabelle easily commands our sympathy, our identification. But the sequence of her brittle affairs steadily shifts her from model to warning. As she moves through the variously unappealing men, as we watch her emotional rollercoaster, we see her as a compulsive dependent, whose modern sexual freedom only restricts self-discovery or lasting satisfaction.
She proves a selfish mother, a difficult ex-wife, and variously unsupportive or unfaithful to her lovers, all under the cover of her own needs and special sensitivity.
As her every sexual conquest only deepens her isolation, Isabelle's whole society is a satire of modern French culture. The genial but foppish neighborhood suitor who invites her to the country only provokes her explosion at bourgeois complacency, especially as it romanticizes their Nature. But from her attack on that cliche she only moves on to act one out herself-picking up the labourer at the bar.
Isabelle's romances here form a critique of French romantic indulgence, especially in its cinema, which has long cornered the world market on free love. Hence the climactic appearance of French icon Gerard Depardieu at the end. In his first scene he appears - at first unidentifiable - with an unfamiliar woman on a date. He dismisses her. That is, he replays Isabelle's hunger for a romantic connection, futilely searching for completion in yet another stranger.
In the next scene he's revealed as Isabelle's ostensible therapist - but he's a psychic! As he spews his intuitions about her various men she brightens in hope. But he's only picking up on her responses to deliver what she wants to hear.
Long the bad boy of French romantic cinema, here the bloated charlatan spews pop psych cliches that only re-enforce her deluded quest for romantic perfection. Hence his urge that she be - not "ouverte" but the American pop - "open" to whatever temptation arises. That's not admitting the sunshine she craves, but reinforcing her darkness. While the credits scroll down the left side of the screen, Depardieu continues the shallow "insight" she needs to continue her pathetic delusions. His running on and on confirms the satiric function of his presence.
Denis provides a rather negative range of characters here. Two men stand apart, the gallery colleague and friend who patiently waits her to return his love and the black man wise enough to insist on taking time to see whether a relationship will naturally develop between them. For a full, healthy relationship we only have Isabelle's friend's report that she and her Jacques are taking the time and trouble to work patiently on a demanding and therefore rewarding connection over time. Without the artist's license, they've moved from nomad to gardener.
jdandtex-338-717921
I decided to take myself to two movies today that were female based. Since I'm a woman in my early sixties, I like what the 1940's called "women's pictures". This was the second movie that I went to see. Oh my gosh! What a BORE! I love Juliette Binoche, but this was not one of her best efforts. The way the trailer was edited, it looked better than it actually was. Ok, I'm gonna be a little snide here, BUT if I wanted to see something like this, all I would have needed to do was pick up the phone and call a girlfriend because I know more that one that has this same problem that Juliette's character in the movie had or if I really wanted to be depressed (which I do not) reexamine my own past with in similar situations. I could have saved $8. If you want to see a "woman's picture" that show woman as powerful, funny, intelligent, willing to takes risks, whatever comes, see either "Book Club" or "Ocean's 8". Both, in my opinion, are class acts. "Let the Sunshine In" is just another movie about a woman who continues to want to be a victim. Honey, we've all been there, including me, but there comes a time to cut bait and run and learn how not to be a victim any longer. And, that does not just include with men. It includes life.
janushouse
This felt like torture. I will say that the acting was believable. But, I had not one moment of caring or compassion for any of the characters, Binoche included. I can't get these minutes of my life back, but I can save others the time wasted. What an incredibly irritating, vapid, meaningless film. I'm going to sleep it off and hope I feel better in the morning. Blech.
elizabethross-74297
This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The trailer makes it look like a comedy. It is not. The credits run over the last weak scene so it becomes unintelligible, maybe in an attempt to obscure the fact that the film has ended without resolution. People in the theater walked out and I wish I had too.
