“So it is a lover who speaks and who says:”
So begins Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, a philosophical text which channels amorous feeling into eighty fragments – scenes of language that range from meditations on ‘waiting’ to ‘I-love-you’. Barthes writes of the amorous subject’s “propensity to talk copiously, with repressed feeling, to the loved being, about his love for that being, for himself, for them.”¹ Copious talk similarly informs Claire Denis’s latest film Let the Sunshine In (2017), which explores the amorous subjectivity of newly-divorced, Parisian artist Isabelle (Juliette Binoche). Rumoured to be inspired by A Lover’s Discourse, the film is centred around Isabelle’s experiences as she navigates romantic encounters with a series of varyingly suitable and unsuitable men.
Like Denis’s L’intrus (2004), a film based on philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s autobiographical account of undergoing a heart transplant, Let the Sunshine In bears only a loose relation to Barthes’s text. Co-written with novelist Christine Angot – who is best known for her book L’Inceste (1999) – the film not only explores ‘a’ lover’s discourse, but also the failures of communication that arise from lovers speaking at cross purposes. A narrative structure of repetition frames (and ultimately undermines) Isabelle’s search for amorous connection. The film begins by cross-cutting between her affair with Vincent, a married banker (Xavier Beauvois), and a chance meeting with an unnamed actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle) at the Théâtre National de La Colline. After the two men disappoint her, and a reunion with her ex-husband (Laurent Grévill) proves unsatisfying, Isabelle’s fleeting, frustrated encounters only accelerate: first with rural, working class Sylvain (Paul Blain); and finally, with fellow artist Marc, played by Denis regular Alex Descas.
Dialogue in the film is excessive, at times almost overburdening scenes. Yet, speaking never quite delivers: characters stumble over their words; phone calls are avoided; and conversations continually create misunderstandings, exacerbating distances between prospective lovers. This is made explicit in Isabelle’s initial encounter with ‘the actor’, whom she meets in the theatre bar. On the drive home after the restaurant, Isabelle laments to the actor that “we’ve talked but I have the impression that we said nothing” – or rather, “we said things and then we said the opposite.” The film continually mines the tension between what is spoken and what remains unspoken for dramatic – and oftentimes comic – effect. This focus on dialogue means that Let the Sunshine In marks a departure from what Martine Beugnet describes as Denis’s “aesthetics of the unsaid”. Denis’s films are typically characterised by elliptical modes of narration, minimal dialogue, psychological opacity, and an attendant focus on materiality, from the sensuous textures of image and sound to the fleshiness of the body. Yet, even with the involvement of Denis’s long-standing collaborators cinematographer Agnès Godard and composer Stuart A. Staples of Tindersticks, Let the Sunshine In is a very different kind of film, both in its engagement with the romantic comedy genre and its audiovisual style.
The film opens with an overhead image of Isabelle in bed: her head resting on white sheets, cast in angular light. Godard’s handheld camera circles clockwise across her bare skin and its proximity magnifies the image’s textural detail. The fluidity of the camera movement draws our attention to Isabelle’s stillness – it’s as if she’s totally indifferent to the “scumbag banker” currently penetrating her. In its filming of the body as landscape, this opening sequence references Denis’s sensuous style. A bloodied still from Denis’s cannibalistic film Trouble Every Day (2001) is shown hanging on the wall of the banker’s apartment: a self-referential nod that alludes to the destructive, destabilising effects of desire still operative in Let the Sunshine In – albeit with less blood. However, here Denis is more interested in centring Isabelle’s experience, sexual and otherwise.
The film unfolds more conventionally, both visually and narratively. In one of the most memorable scenes, we watch Isabelle in bed with her ex-husband. By paralleling the opening sequence with the banker, the scene renders visible the difference between good and bad sex: Isabelle no longer wears a vacant expression. Yet, when her ex licks his finger during sex, Isabelle freezes: “That’s not you. It’s not natural, it’s like you’re repeating something that you saw elsewhere”. This exchange astutely calls attention to the social scripts that shape sexual as well as romantic experiences, specifically the way in which they impose upon female desire. At the same time, it registers another form of miscommunication between lovers. Isabelle is less unsettled by the posturing or gesture itself than by its unfamiliarity: a reminder of the distance between them that cannot be bridged.
Cut to the relentless movement of a train journey as Isabelle, now alone, heads towards a contemporary art festival in La Souterraine with a group of artist friends and gallerists. A walking tour sets the stage for an aesthetic debate. When the men begin pontificating about the French countryside’s beauty, Isabelle angrily interjects, gesturing wildly at the surrounding landscape: “it’s all yours…the land, the sky, the mountains…we won’t steal anything…don’t worry it’s all yours!” To the group, Isabelle’s interjection appears incongruous with the preceding conversation. For the spectator, who has witnessed her romantic misalignments, Isabelle’s (anti-patriarchal) outburst offers a moment of exhalation – an intimation of some form of escape from her incessant back-and-forth with unsuitable men, notably the banker who refuses to leave his wife; and the actor who expresses ambivalence about meeting a second time. Yet her outburst is far from a reckoning. Later, at a local bar, drinks unfold into dancing. Like the “Nightshift” centrepiece of Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum (2008), the sequence traces a choreography of movement and gesture to wordlessly mark a shift in amorous relations – this time to the sound of Etta James’s ‘At Last’. Isabelle glances toward a local, Sylvain; the camera lingers as she removes her jacket and walks towards him, focusing in close-up on the turn of her neck as he kisses her. Dance seems to present an alternative to speech, one that enables different forms of expression and relationality – perhaps even romantic connection. Yet, unlike in 35 Shots of Rum, this potential immediately fades with Isabelle’s return to Paris.
In the film’s final act, Isabelle’s romance with Sylvain is proven unsustainable and an encounter with artist Marc is left in uncertainty. After Marc delays Isabelle’s advances with an ambiguous “we’ll meet in a month if you’re still here”, Let the Sunshine In cuts to a couple in a parked car, discussing their similarly mismatched expectations. The camera tracks in on the car, its engine still running; the limited visibility draws our attention to the strangers’ voices: ‘Denis, the clairvoyant’ (Gérard Depardieu) and his wife. As his wife professes “I don’t know what to say,” Denis’s abrupt cry mixes with the car’s mechanised hum. Let the Sunshine In concludes with Isabelle visiting the clairvoyant’s office and we listen as she begs for insight into her romantic future, while he attempts to seduce her. Even as the final credits come to a close, the two continue speaking, uninterrupted and at cross purposes – refusing the spectator a reprieve. Rather than an aesthetics of the unsaid, Let the Sunshine In exposes dialogue’s relational insufficiency.
References
¹ Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010 [1977]), 73.
² Martine Beugnet, Claire Denis (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2004), 20.
Barthes, Roland. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 2010 [1977].
Beugnet, Martine. Claire Denis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.
