‘LET THE SUNSHINE IN’

Unrated 1:34

Juliette Binoche plays Isabelle, a divorced painter living in Paris who, as the movie opens, is in the throes of not-quite-wonderfullooking sex with her lover Vincent (Xavier Beauvois). For reasons that become evident in that and subsequent scenes, Vincent is not ideal for Isabelle, even though he admires her bohemian ways and commitment to art.

Holding the couple in a steady, squared-off frame, director Claire Denis observes Vincent’s condescension, pedantry and desire, along with Isabelle’s ambivalence, self-loathing — for allowing him to patronize her — and need. All this, in the space of one cocktail at a quiet corner of a bar.

Denis obeys that same sense of decorum throughout “Let the Sunshine In,” which she adapted with Christine Angot from a 1977 book by Roland Barthes. Meeting a series of men and trying them on for size, Isabelle emerges as a fascinating bundle of contradictions: fiercely independent, but painfully susceptible to male approval; robustly and gloriously middle-aged (Binoche is 54), but still hanging on to the clothes and behavior of her youth; prone to temperamental outbursts, but smart and supremely self-aware.

It’s Binoche, here delivering one of her finest and most subtly calibrated performances, who imbues Isabelle with the heart and earthy eroticism that makes her far more appealing, even heroic, than the pathetic figure she might have been. This is a funny, candid, sexy and kind of sad chronicle of a woman who dares to demand the kind of companionship and spark-fueled physical intimacy that, by too many, is reserved only for far younger women.

“Let the Sunshine In” plays Saturday and Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art; the film is in French with subtitles.

Starring: Juliette Binoche, Xavier Beauvois, Philippe Katerine, Gérard Depardieu. (Contains brief nudity, strong language, and sexuality.)