Good actors with great casting, Paris as the backdrop, but the story is a complete dud. This was a total disaster as far as the writing, a failure both in the story as well as the insipid dialogue.

Being, more or less, in the age bracket of Benoche and her character, I find it a bit ridiculous that she stagnates in an adolescent passive-aggressive attitude with men. Say what you mean and mean what you say, someone once said. If you want someone, at this age you can't waste a lot of time being coy or clever.

Just what she saw in the banker is beyond my ability to read what women want. Physically unattractive, arrogant and abusive with the bartender, and dismissive of her feelings point to the fact that what? She's with him for his money?

I'm not saying that people my age can't find "true love" but I think we have to be rational adults while looking for it. The scene in the car and then in her apartment were both so incredibly awkward, worse than anything I suffered in my teens. Grow up! I hated both of those scenes. Thoroughly unromantic.

And then they manage to somehow shoe-horn in a dialogue with Gerard Depardieu?

I was forced to watch the film with inadequate English subtitles that didn't begin to translate the true sense of the French original dialogue, but my French isn't quite good enough to watch it without subtitles. I can never find French films with French subtitles which is the perfect combination for me. People learning English as a second language never have a problem finding English subtitles for English films and TV shows, so stop being so smug about the fact that you speak English.

"Let the Sunshine In" (2017 release from France; 94 min.; original title "Un beau soleil intérieur") brings the story of Isabelle. As the movie opens, we see Isabelle, naked, and making love to a guy we later learn is married (but not to Isabelle). Isabelle is enjoying a week of relative freedom as her 10 yr. old daughter is away at her dad's, Isabelle's former husband Francois. Soon we learn that Isabelle is deeply unhappy and restless about where she is in her life, and her love life in particular. At this point we're 10 min. into the movie but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the latest movie from French writer-director Claire Denis. Here she gets to work with one of France's treasures, actress Juliette Binoche. Binoche carries this movie on her shoulders from start to finish, and along the way exposes herself in ways I can't recall before. And it has to be said: Binoche is not in her mid-50s but she looks at least 10 years younger. The movie is what one could generalize as being a "typical French talkie", in which there is a lot, a LOT, of conversation and not much else. The director had the great sense of letting scenes play out, for minutes on, without interruption, as if we are simply a fly on the wall listening in on strangers talking. And yet, for all that closeness, I couldn't find myself all that emotionally invested in the movie or these characters. Yes, one feels that Binoche is delivering a towering performance but so what? Last but not least, Gerard Depardieu makes an appearance at the very end of the movie, as a fortune teller of some sort.

""Let the Sunshine In" premiered at last year's Cannes film festival, to positive acclaim (mostly for Juliette Binoche's performance). Almost exactly a year later, this movie finally showed up at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The Saturday matinee performance where I saw this at was not attended well (4 people, including myself), I honestly can't see this playing in the theater very long. If you are interested in "French talkies" or a character study of a woman struggling with various relationships (think "An Unmarried Woman" or "Starting Over"), I'd suggest you check this out, be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

If you remember the recording by Jonny Ray, from the fifties and cited above, I need say no more but chances are you won't so I will. Off the top of my head I can think of only one reasonably entertaining movie by Clare Denis and that was Vendredi Soir (Friday Night) in which, during a transport strike, motorists are urged via radio to offer lifts to pedestrians; Valerie Lemercier accordingly picks up Vincent Lindon and the two complete strangers wind up in the sack. Sixteen years Denis is at it again albeit Juliette Binoche doesn't stop with one man but is on a mission. Binoche was, of course, the selling point and she doesn't let us down, turning in a virtuoso performance. For reasons best known to Ms. Denis, Gerard Depardieu, now resembling a small house, is wheeled out in the last frame contributing only ennui.One for the pseud set.