HYBRID IN-PERSON AND ONLINE PROGRAM

Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis, 2017, 94 min.)

Linda DeLibero, Senior Lecturer and Special Advocate for Alumni and Outreach, and Former Director of the JHU Film and Media Studies Program

Claire Denis, the grande dame of French cinema and a major inspiration for all the directors in our series, has been a fixture in international cinema for nearly 40 years. Many of her films reflect her experiences growing up in French West Africa where her father worked as a civil servant, an influence most notable in her autobiographical first feature, Chocolat (1988), and in Beau Travail (1999) and White Material (2009), both recognized as complex masterworks of the post-colonial experience. But Denis has plied her art in a multitude of genre-bending works. Let the Sunshine In, whose French title’s more accurate translation is “a beautiful interior sun,” is her entry in the evergreen genre of the woman’s film, but since this is Denis, it’s possibly the most incisive and intelligent woman’s film ever made. The woman in question, Isabelle, a successful artist in her prime, is played by a fearless and radiant Juliette Binoche, one of the greatest French actors in contemporary cinema. By turns seductive, impetuous, heart-rending and maddening, she is so captivating and physically present that the camera can’t turn away. Nor can we. Isabelle is unabashedly on the hunt for true love, which proves an elusive target for a middle-aged woman who knows she is due something better and finer than the men in her life can ever deliver. As she makes her way through a series of encounters—both intellectual and erotic—the film subtly probes the limits of what true connection looks like and the futility of finding it in our lonely contemporary world.

$10 fee for guests (No charge for ASG members, ASG subscribers, and RI members)