Hell is other people. But it is also yourself. Especially if everyone involved can't stop talking and analyzing. That's the impression I come
away with _Let the Sunshine In_, Claire Denis' semi-new horror show. It
makes sense with this fearless director, a romantic adventurer seeking to redefine herself after the nihilistic deadend of her _Bastards_. The bourgeose, artist/gallery-owner mileau (a class-conscious code word used
like a baseball bat) must be even more alien to Denis than the African, Polynesian, and decaying urban landscapes in the director's _Chocolat_,
_Beau Travail_, _White Materials_, _No Fear, No Die_, and _I Can't Sleep_.
Her next film, appropriately, takes place in outerspace, so she must feel
she owes it to herself to explore the inside of our chaotic, diseased consciousness.

The details of the patient slowly emerges in a series of one-on-one
encounters, each a chapter in psychopathology. Juliette Binoche is
Isabelle, an artist who has recently left her lover/husband and their 10-year-old daughter. Anxiety consumes her; she is adrift, feels her
love life is over. She dates men from the gallery circle -- bankers,
actors, "creative" people who are self-obsessed and controlling.
They cannot talking about their own needs and quirks, or bad-mouthing Isabelle's new lovers (especially those who are outside this clique).
In one hilarious scene she is touring the countryside with "friends,"
and screams her head off at their self-satisfaction -- for talking like
their own the universe, but mostly for talking. She herself is lack,
neediness personified.

One can imagine Denis, the anti-Eric Rohmer, the most poetic and
intuitive makers of inexplicable, primal fables, being similarly
horrified at this deluge of verbalization and analysis. This
challenge and heart-felt need to explore another exotic "landscape"
must be why she works with new collaborator Christine Angot on this
curiously stage-like film. (The original story is apparently by
Roland Barthes; the adapation must be a whale of a job.) _Let the
Sunshine In_ is like the morning-after reckoning that comes after
the romantic liaison in _Friday Night_, the wordless physical
attraction in _35 Shots of Rum_. Alex Descas, a frequent Denis
collaborator, is a potential mate; he is zen-like, man of few words,
wants to take things slow; he seems destined for Isabelle. Then
she goes see a psychic (Gerard Depardieu) who seems attracted to
Isabelle herself and ruins everything for her in an avalanche of
words as the credit rolls.

Agnes Godard is the cinematographer again, and the film starts
with a naked Binoche in a love scene, the camera tactilely
tracking the lovers' bodise. Not long afterwards, Isabelle meets
her banker bastard boyfriend in a bar, and the lense takes turn
zapping between the faces of the suspects (like in _In the Mood
for Love_), taking its time, an orbiter searching for a landing
spot. Then for long stretches Godard goes for more conventional
two-shots or static masters, as if to heighten the sense of
oppression. Seductive night time scenes of Paris and bird-eye's
views of RER rail-lines tease our memory of _Friday Night_ and
_35 Shots of Rum_. But for the most part the camera stays
static. It is a departure for Denis; it is alienating, and
works especially well with the inventive end credits.

For all Isabelle's faults, she is a genuine seeker, and no one
can accuse of her lacking authenticity (another key word in the
screenplay) in a mileau seemingly lacking in that quality.
One can say the same of the film; it is not a masterpiece,
but unlike _Bastards_ and _White Materials_ it is the work of
a filmmaker genuinely looking for something new, to re-invent
herself. I was worried about Denis after _Bastards_; now I
feel she has another masterpiece in her yet.

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