Claire Denis's Un beau soleil intérieur | Let the Sunshine in (2017)

Claire Denis's Un beau soleil intérieur, being set in Paris, is far removed from her colonial African films, is freely adapted from Roland Barthes's Fragments d'un discours amoureux (1977), and is co-written by Denis and Christine Angot. Denis loves the word 'Agony' (written in English), which is used as a way of beginning the screenplay. The word was seen as a kind of magic, of fantasy: in a way, it was the theme of their own 'agonies amoureuses' that set off the writing.

Isabelle (Juliette Binoche) can't find love. There's (bad) sex from the unbearable, egotistical and married banker Vincent (Xavier Beauvois), who treats her like shit, as he treats barmen. Then there's the neurotic actor with a drink problem (Nicolas Duvauchelle), who regrets sleeping with her. There's Sylvain (Paul Blain), fellow artist (Alex Descas), but no go. Isabelle seems to be losing it when she asks a taxi driver about his happiness. And finally, as fortune teller, there's Gérard Depardieu, who talks a great deal, almost seems to be proposing something with Isabelle, and mentions the expression which provides the title to the film: the film credits rolling by as he finishes his prattle is super.

Very amusing this film certainly is, although by no means everyone appears to have grasped the humour, seeing it as very bleak, which it is at the same time, but then romcom it certainly isn't.