Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Instant Favorite.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I paid to see this-because of the strong cast, I suppose. Never before were sex scenes in a French film unintendedly alienating. Avoid it!

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.

Claire Denis' "Let the Sun Shine In" is an exhausting and overwhelming experience, as is the choreography of romance and life it is set in. In the world of tinder, it's all 1s and 0s, but real life these days is much less binary and less immediately satisfying. You won't find that kind of easy romcom satisfaction in Denis' film. One is buffeted by indecision, imprecision, and inaction while swimming in self doubt and self loathing. Isabelle, our stand-in for the duration, is emotionally exhausting. She asks a lot of her lovers and of the audience. She says "stay with me, stay," and Denis uses Juliette Binoche to maximum seductive affect but it's not an easy journey. Isabelle is, by turns, a strong woman with a lot to offer and who knows what she wants, but also a weak human being filled with doubt. She's a paradox and a contradiction, but she also understands without acknowledging that she will always have opportunities...another opportunity. She is someone who is exploring the boundaries of her self. It's perplexing territory to the men she meets but also to herself. Denis shows us as many facets of Isabelle as we are willing to see, that we can see. I think there's a lot more there than I could see at one sitting. A unique portrait. Her best film since "White Material." I'd love to talk to her about it!

A good French romantic comedy with an easy go. It is a story of a middle aged woman Isabelle, a divorcée who seeks a meaningful love with a spicy intimate relationship. She meets and have short relationships with couple of men but ended up only with illusion. Isabelle is just a woman like any other, who needs love care and sex in a normal manner. But the men she meets with quite different personas are huge mismatches to her love expectations and desires. Juliette Binoche is the centerfold of this movie, taking command of her character Isabelle rendering great stamina to the character. There is no doubt about Binoche's awesome acting talents and beauty and she keeps her legend in the movie by giving a very vibrant intensity to Isabelle's character. She laughs, she cries, she suffers, she daydreams, she's angry, she fights - all these moments are exceptionally portrayed by Binoche like a fish swimming in the water. All men portrayed are skilled actors and have done justice to their characters.Director Claire Denis does a great job. She coordinates a great screenplay with great acting and editing. She manages the opening sex scene very well in which high intimacy running wild between the couple but something is seriously missing kind of idea successfully transmitted to the audience. Denis uses close up techniques quite successfully, particularly of Isabelle's facial reflections, to display the complexity of her character. Music is appropriate and suits most of the scenes. The balance between the close-up shots with wide angles speaks a lot about a good cinematographer. My only complaint is about the end scene where Isabelle meets the fortune teller and when he starts a pretty boring 10-15 minutes 'analysis' about her love life and the men she have had affairs with. Total waste of time and his monotonous boring voice kills half of the good mood you acquired since the beginning of the movie. Denis should have left that analysis be done by the audience, on their own way rather than narrated through a dull character. A good one, as often as we get from the French side of the world.