Popular reviews

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  Review by Wes ★★★★ 4

  i dont ask for a lot. if claire denis wants to capture the essence of a depressed, terminally horny juliette binoche, who are we to say no.

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  Review by KYK ★★★★½

  1) "at last" jazz version softly plays in the background -- juliette binoche's married lover tells her she's charming but that his wife is 'extraordinary'

  2) etta james painting hangs above binoche as she's curled up on the couch, devastated

  3) "at last" by etta james plays in the club (IN THE CLUB!!) when she first meets and dances with sylvain

  claire denis! fuck!

  NYFF 2017.

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★

  I really don’t quite now how to review it. At first I thought about just not write anything, so not to embarrass myself, but I’m a fool so here it goes. I’m fascinated by how the film can feel warm and close, so especific yet at same time keep itself out of reach. Giving a look at writing here and outside these scale seem to be a recurring theme, the film is either perceptive or distant according to how one feels about it, my impression is that Denis achieved something very hard remaining warm but clinical. In this and only on this, the film does suggest the Barthes book that supposedly was the starting point for the project. It is…

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  Review by Aaron Michael 2

  So many ugly men!!

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  Review by David Sims ★★★★½ 4

  French men, man. Boufff. No one does end credits better than Denis

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  Review by Lara Pop ★★½ 25

  #Binoche-athon Revisited

  Watched with Cormac

  Let the Sunshine In is like having sex with a scumbag and knowing the moment you'll reach orgasm is when your disgust for him peaks. No cuddles afterwards.

  Apologies to Claire Denis for such a blunt opening, but her... banging intro certainly set the tone for the unfulfilling, languid affair where the emotions clash but all you're left with is indifference and perhaps a slight craving for a cigarette after the sex.

  Contrary to Denis' masterful fusing of style & substance in her opus Beau Travail, here she provides a mere glossy frame – with no content underneath. Stylistically, the film boasts a capable director: the soundtrack is refined and brimming with taste, the cinematography pulsating…

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 1

  (Her standards are so inexplicable to me, but then, she's actually connecting, even if it is with people who are reprehensible, beneath her, scum of the earth. She's alone but not alone; so part of me still envies her odyssey. The enigma here is her; we see the tears in her eyes, we see the pain in her face, but when she is not hurt all we see is a blank slate. The men are cold, contemptuous. Not a single one shows any companionship, kindness, or sincerity. This is a scathing film, and its moments of humor are undercut by its bleakness in retrospect. It looks cold, feels cold, shimmering darkness of a city night or sunny days blotted out by thin fabric, it's all sharp but limited, always moving.)

  52 project: 52/52

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★

  Easily dismissed as a comedy that's too French for its own good, but this is a spellbinding film that transposes Denis' longstanding mastery of the perspective shot to a rhythmic use of dialogue to convey shifting levels of interest and attempts at both connection and rejection. The men are amusingly simple in their attentions, from the banker who speaks about Isabelle as if appraising a new vase for his guest area to the actor whose petulance emergence the second he leaves the bedroom.

  It can be unexpectedly heartbreaking in Isabelle's moments of vulnerability: we get yet another masterpiece Denis dance sequence, and Binoche's scene with Alex Descas is so tender and simultaneously open and guarded as to be nearly unbearable…

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★½ 4

  48/100

  As a dude, do I have the "right" to get indignant about a film—directed by a woman, written by two women, apparently somewhat autobiographical in the case of novelist Christine Angot—because it focuses exclusively on the female protag's mostly self-debasing relationships with various men? Maybe not, but I felt kinda gross watching this all the same. Denis isn't Breillat, fearlessly committed to exploring masochistic behavior; her sensibility is much more...let's call it "sparing," as an antonym of "unsparing." And in this context, such generosity of spirit feels shallow. Binoche struggles to fashion a coherent personality from oscillating brusqueness and neediness, in a way that recalls Broadcast News' Jane Craig...except that film is equally interested in Jane's professional life, whereas…

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★ 1

  Claire Denis has never shied away from stories of love and desire, but her films tend to render such romantic ideals as atmospheric abstractions, or corrupt them with militaristic repression and fits of extreme violence. For example, the most erotically charged movie she’s ever made is about a caged bride who escapes from her Paris dungeon and bites strange men to death during sex (oh, yeah, and it stars Vincent Gallo).

  Prior to Cannes, her most recent feature starred Lola Créton as a teenage girl who was raped with an ear of corn. “35 Shots of Rum” and “Friday Night” are both supremely tender works of art, but they’re also both haunted stories of loss and isolation, holes that can never be filled, let alone played for laughs.

  READ THE FULL REVIEW ON INDIEWIRE

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  Review by Arthur Tuoto ★★★★½

  Primeiro filme da Claire Denis que concebe uma relação mais direta com o drama. Talvez só o U.S. Go Home se aproxima de algo do gênero. Em todos os outros trabalhos da diretora, existe uma rarefação, um mediador, um simbolizante. Aqui não. Ela se livra de tudo. Algo praticamente inédito pro cinema dela.

  E algo muito difícil de se realizar hoje em dia. É necessário desaprender algumas coisas pra articular um elemento tão imediato assim com a cena. Ainda mais depois de quase vinte anos de um cinema contemporâneo muito carregado por essa lógica que, mesmo quando é naturalista, intervém muito no seu material. Um cinema que ou tira (a rarefação) ou coloca demais (o simbolizante, a estilização). Deve ser…

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  Review by Lowe McKee 39

  Lessons learned while watching Claire Denis’ Let the Sunshine In: 

  Lesson #1: never fall in love with a married man who orders hot water (no lemon) and “gluten-free olives” at the bar. 

  Lesson #2: don’t sleep with a married actor who has a lower back tattoo and casually mentions he has the capacity for violence on the first date. 

  Oh boy. These fellas are scumbags. Card carrying members of the red-flag party. And I mean comically so. Countless lies, absurd justifications, seemingly blatant manipulation, all schemes to get our protagonist into bed. How can she not see it? Well, she can. Clear as day. We accept the love we think we deserve. Dating as a middle aged woman can’t be…