Denis adds edge to rom-com
Don’t let the title Let the Sunshine In fool you. The English name of French filmmaker Claire Denis’ latest (Un Beau Soleil Intérieur in her native France) sounds more appropriate as a banal inspirational quote on an ombrepink-hued vision board than a film by Denis. Some have called it the first rom-com for the 72-yearold auteur — an accurate term if a rom-com consisted primarily of gallows humour.
Denis’ paradoxically cynical, humanist cinema has tackled topics as serious and cerebral as post-colonialism, sexual violence and the gendered performance of masculinity across a richly layered body of work. Rarely does it hinge on the romantic, like in Sunshine. But “romantic” implies idealism, and Sunshine is bittersweet in its depiction of love, presenting the navigation of middle-age dating and soulmatesearching as a confusing and contradictory journey.
Isabelle’s (Juliette Binoche), tribulations might have something to do with the quality of men she dates. Most are awful in a variety of fashions: Vincent (Xavier Beauvois), a contemptuous middle-aged banker whose treatment of servers is an
immediate red flag; a younger, unnamed alcoholic actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle) with a hot-and-cold temperament, who blames Isabelle because he feels too vulnerable around her; her ex-husband François (Laurent Grévill), who tries to control Isabelle’s personal space in the guise of protecting their daughter. The former two have wives, so it’s not like Isabelle is doing herself any favours choosing men.
Unlike other romantic comedies dealing with middle-aged dating, Sunshine doesn’t just embrace the sexuality of middleaged women, it portrays it as a given. It’s easier to accept an older woman having sex onscreen when the actress is as beautiful as Binoche, of course, but it’s also likely that a filmmaker like Denis — from a culture more sexually liberated than other Western countries — would never consider this as even questionable.
That resulting candour about sex is refreshing, to say the least.