CLAIRE DENIS’ LET THE SUNSHINE IN “Is this my life?”

© 2019 by James Clark

Filmmaker, Claire Denis, is old enough to remember the supernova that was Ingmar Bergman. Lucky her. Lucky us.

A while ago we noted, in her film, White Material (2009), how the protagonist comes up far short of the magic  having been glimpsed–glimpsed on the order of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957)–despite remarkable courage and intensity. Now, in the film, Let the Sunshine In (2017), we have a second instance of her gifts and dilemmas, this time anchored by, Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). The protagonist of White Material had felt that taking a standpoint in Africa would suit her rigorous needs far better than Paris. The protagonist, Isabelle, in our hunt today, embraces Paris and its subtleties, and especially its promise of what is called love. Let’s see what her plunge into the City of Light can do for her, and us.

Isabelle’s meander in that Tout-Paris (the City’s “advanced” visions) ominously reminds us of the tone-dead coterie of Desiree, in the cited film, from 1955, who easily tolerates carnivorous bores. As such, we’ll use here the same means of explication as before, namely, giving pretty short shrift to the overrated fancy pants, and putting on the high-beams for a seemingly demented but feisty oldster, like Desiree’s mother/dowager/oracle, functioning at the outset of the twentieth century. Now, in today’s very challenging film before us, we have a troubling facsimile of the distant, old Swedish laser, in the form of a Gallic, psychic, clairvoyant, medium, quack—no oracle, but a self-contradictory bloodhound.

The introduction of the latter brims with wit and sinewy earthiness, being, in fact, a hybrid of both the very sharp dowager and her inconsistent servant, Frid. Thereby, the first step, of the erratic Parisian phenomenologist-oldster, involves him being smacked by a blonde girlfriend who has parked her car outside his eccentric Belle Epoque cabin, which could be a windmill without the sails.  His howl from the slap brings to mind Frid’s new girlfriend, Petra, as inured to smashes as a linebacker. Even before this conflict, we have a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, flickering out lasers like the whirling motions of a windmill, and thereby implying a visitation from a distant past. The driver, now saddened, follows up with, “We’ll  never see each other again?” (This being a frequent situation in the preceding actions.) The avatar of good relations makes the chilly reply, “I don’t think so.” Her sad face in close-up reanimates Petra’s lament to Frid, “Why have I never been a young lover? Can you tell me that?” And it also reanimates Frid’s reply: “We are denied the love of loving. We don’t have the gift… Nor the punishment.” The new Frid, on departing the car, asks himself, “How could I have believed in her?” Petra and Frid head for a tempered marriage. The marriages of the dowager appear to have been even less than that. The difficulty of specifying where Isabelle’s heart lies remains to be explored.

The day after the unbelieved, who but our protagonist, checks into the precinct of happiness, after many avenues of disbelief. Like Frid, his distant kin, the clinician may be more than a bit cavalier, but his seasick sliding accommodates the relentless dilemma of doing justice to and also circumventing a cast of characters hard to believe having a faculty of mood. (In the flow of her misadventures, there are frequent sources of  solo and trio jazz touches which no one pays any attention to.) In close-up, they sit across a table without light, their shadowy presence apt for the paradox which humbles them at every move. In a register hoping for the look of expertise (sprinkling jargon like, “transactionally”), he begins with, “The first thing is not to pick up emotional interference… I see you manifesting artistic work. [No doubt disclosed in the appointment.] We’ll have to explore that later, to see if these elements speak to you.” (Isabelle, in a tone implying having already settled that topic, declares, “I’m an artist. It’s my life. The question is my emotional experience.” [Since when does emotion not figure in art? What she means by “emotional” is matrimony—the territory of housemaid, Petra. This turn has sent Isabelle into tears.]) Moving on, she alludes to “another person,” recently coming into her life. He sees that this matter is, for her, “a little devastating.” To which she cries out, “You have to help, because I don’t know…” In one of the supposed seer’s frequent gaffes, he jazzes things up, with, “He could be on the borderline. You attract them.” She matches his hasty busywork, by her immature wish-list, “I don’t lose him entirely? Yes, he was very fulfilling.” The medium counters with, “I don’t know the man. He may see things differently. He’ll try to make contact again. But you’ll have to be careful of mood swings… He goes off easily… You’re going to see him again.” (This elicits from Isabelle one of her movie-star, incandescent smiles, the facility for such presences leaving the viewer confused.) “At that moment of affection, I suggest that you shut the door, re-set the table Then she pushes more buttons, seeing that the session could come down to an all-you-can-eat banquet. Referring to a very low-key museum director, far removed from any borderline and its excitements, she inadvertently prompts the fortune teller to the fantasy of her helping the timid admirer, “to go to the other side…” He adds, “I don’t think he’s the love of your life” [an instance of the incoherence infuriating his no-longer-lover, as per, “And at the same time, no…” Then he counsels, “Be in position to meet other people.” Her response shows her too timid to venture. “I won’t lose him?” she prompts. “He’ll come back,” the businessman assures, adding, “Don’t get yourself in a stew. He’s a trap. Kill two birds with one stone…” As if you didn’t know at this point, that Isabelle is a horse that never left the post, her being delivered to this final idea—and liking it—takes her out of the running of the “love of loving” and its “punishment”: “Tend to what matters most: yourself.” Someone in this saga does relight the disinterested. energies of the oracle and Frid. And that figure redefines “punishment” for our ever- so- smart times.

Let’s let this red herring finish its course, in order to fully align with Isabelle’s frenetic homeland, the real outrage at the core of this film. Loving to hear the sound of his advantage, the underground pope begins wrapping up the first of many sessions. “Is he your future? No, I don’t think so. Something better is coming… Weightier… I think he has dark hair. He’s unbalanced that one! That’s when I see someone new is coming.” (By now, the end credits are running alongside this strange conversation. With the visual bedlam of dozens of names you don’t want to know, drifting by, the reader of Isabelle’s bathos pronounces, “You need people out of the ordinary, someone who experiences things… You need someone authentic… He’s an important man, but I think he’s only a transition to bring you peace… Be careful… Not to be really believed. He’s a man who can hurt women. He could use you as a crutch. It’s not possible… You mustn’t come out of it bruised and battered.” [Frid had a more severe engagement of sufficiency, with his link between pristine love and punishment—not to be taken as fully grounded]. Apropos of the 50-ish museum official not resorting to rushing, her off her feet, the clinic-owner reiterates, “I don’t think he’s for you… The love of your life is contingent on the point, “open…” Then, whoops, there he goes again: “He’ll be back… He’ll never be good for you… I see you with people better than this… If I were you, I wouldn’t torture yourself… Let things happen… Try to find a beautiful sun within…”)

That latter cliché stands in provocative contrast to the cinematic root-systems by which it fails to thrive. The limp, aimless notion of rallying has been preceded by serious emotive traction in the films by Bergman, as we have noted with particular concern for functionaries in his, Smiles of a Summer Night. Frid and Petra, in the midst of a midnight sun evoking mysteries you don’t see when wrapped up in intrigue, touch us not by their beer-driven blitheness, but their earthy sense of being unable to be the creatures they are. (We’ll see Isabelle spit out in dry fashion, “Is this my life?”) As we have just come to notice its shock, the industry of medicating a status of unsatisfying playmates is a bogus, effete travesty of love in the absence of another agency, namely, nature itself, crucially informing and being informed by us.

The other unearthly probe in that long-ago illumination is that of the seldom-seen dowager, as if evading a deadly plague. Her motto, “I am tired of people. But that doesn’t stop me loving them,” is facilitated by her fortune and remote estate. Bergman has brought her to light as a flawed genius, eliciting a gusto too much for her, and him. And Denis has stepped up to the plate—just in time—to suggest finding in a form of hand-to-and combat the way of love of loving  and tempering punishment. Her film, White Material, has wakened the sensual logic which graces The Seventh Seal, pertaining to acrobatics and “impossible” juggling, whereby film or a trace of film, becomes, at essence, dance, or circus. Her film today more incisively faces up to the remarkable odds which that weaponry somehow has to deploy.

By way of a prequel to the Bergman “comedy” of smiles, our first episode has Isabelle receiving as much amorous power as can be mustered, by Vincent, a banker and dabbler in art dealing (in lieu of Egerman, the attorney-at-law, who has been found to be lacking, by actress, Desiree, the “sophisticate”-on-the-prowl, looking for the perfect wave). Vincent’s embarrassment—he had optimistically called out, “I feel good”—launches a squall of slapstick. He fires at her, “How was it with your previous friend?” And she slaps him in the face. None of this deters her from setting up a follow-up appointment the next day. He forgets to call; she goes to his chic flat with a view of the Arc de Triumph; and he repels her complaint by referring to her as “the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” On to a bar, he floats the gossip that her ex is now having an affair with the art dealer she had recently begun to work with. (This distresses her; and next day she finds it was a cheap fabrication.) He dictates the bartender to fetch a cup of hot water, in conjunction with his expensive whisky; then demands gluten-free olives. “Why use that tone?” she asks; but surely, she knows, and as such she becomes a piece of work for the ages. About 50 years of age and managing to look 30, and living over a fitness centre while dressing like a financial adviser, she shows us needing networking more than coherence. And then there is the inconvenience that an artist not obsessed with coherence is not an artist at all. Vincent, ignoring her small scruple, turns on what he thinks to be charm. “ I admire you. I do. You are an amazing woman. It’s simple, I’d like to be you. You do the best work in the world… Banking is so alienating … Touch this, it’s a little swollen. You’re charming, but my wife is extraordinary.” (If you listen carefully, a mellow—too mellow—sax plays a few notes of the tune, “At Last.” The sublime to come; and the ridiculousness to do something about it.)

Just as in the foibles of Desiree, a very early media star, who teams up with an arrogant and deadly duelist, a Count, no less, we then have Isabelle attempting a partnership with a lady-killer actor, along some never specified, mixed-media sensation. The volatility of the former involved his physically beating her, a moment quickly ending their questionable heights. But Isabelle, true to form, though not actually assaulted (but hearing him admitting he has taken that route with his wife), submits to his manipulative,  perverse abuse for quite a long time. (Due to the investigative twist necessitated by getting out there first the oracle in Smiles of a Summer Night, the better to expose a rancid normality, our follow-up, as to Let the Sunshine In, despite the absence of a credible expert, remains a crime scene, bearing down upon the question of that “impossible” juggling which can reanimate, somewhat, the zombies of advantage.) The matinee idol—seen being fawned upon backstage by an international mob of groupies—shapes a vaguely Hamlet, Scandinavian persona of being too honest for joy. He’s about 20 years her junior and, in his first moment seen, at his dressing table, there are about 15 empty beer bottles in view.  “I’m sick of the nightly grind… My life is lacking in desire… I never get bored. I only know it [my marriage] is over, I’m leaving out of cowardice… I’m afraid of what it will trigger… Meeting you is part of the picture…” Moving along to a restaurant, she tells him, “You’ve unsettled me. I wasn’t ready for this” [that, of course, being his innermost sadistic desire]. He counters with, “Everything is still open,” that latter term being the mantra by which the quack and the bimbo sign off their first tete-a-tete. (The restaurant interior, seen from the sidewalk, offers lighting fixtures and collateral ambiance being another universe from the squalor rattling along. Similarly, his driving her to her flat shows more openness than they care to make a project of.) The highlight of that drive to them occurs when he squeezes her knee. Parked outside her place, she comes to some kind of sense, and declares, “We got nowhere.” He, having the next day off, suggests, “I’ll call you.” Her idea is, “Let’s not meet again. It’s not working.” Moving up to his A-game, he chastises her for spurning him. She, incredulous, declares, “How can you feel like a spurned lover?” Then she promptly  plays a diplomatic card. “Don’t listen to everything I say.” From there, he’s in her flat, having champagne and undocumented coitus. (Along the way, he feigns being awkward about “what to say.” She states, with some theatricality of her own, “It feels so good!” He adds, “I’ll shut your security door.”) On his leaving she leans back to a wall and, more 15 than 50, gasps, “Wonderful!” Next day, the yo-yo guy sinks a 3-poiner, to the tune of, “We shouldn’t have done it so soon. There’s ambiguity in love. But this isn’t a love-thing. It’s behind us. We spoiled everything…[here she reflexively blurts out, “Maybe not!”] Crying is for old maids… I regret it… nothing like you before…” His offer—both of them having somehow showed up at the dark and silent lodges of his workplace—to take her to a show that night, goes nowhere. We see him descending the Metro. Another rat. She walks by a large, steel, blue sculpture, suggesting an iceberg.  Then she takes a Jim-Jarmusch, taxi, and the bright lights. She tells the black cabbie, “I’m fed up.” His remedy is Public Radio and a knowing sax tune. The flow of the car and the flow of the sax meld to the ripples of light in the seemingly eternal night. “I’m not well,” is how she ignores the remedy.  “I’m going home.”

After a sleepless, restless night, she’s at an opening show of paintings, and one stands out—a small, ferocious portrait of a figure with blonde hair and a Negro visage. She doesn’t know it then, but that’s a fanfare of her moment to prove she’s what she calls herself, an artist, letting the sunshine in. Along with her colleagues, she follows up that skyrocket on the gallery wall, with a trip to an ancient farm town, the site of a contemporary arts festival. (Desiree’s next step, after dumping the Count, was to convene a decadent intrigue in the country.) In sharp contrast with her trolling the urban eyesores of the renowned Capital, she begins at the window of a train amidst not only delicious woods in silhouette and delicately-hued farmlands in winter, but also the panoramic access of the flight along the tracks, and the ways the foliage elicits gambits, rare and daunting—demanding self-control. In fact she soon commits a frenzied harangue against her aesthete travelling companions, recalling (not coincidentally) the young, prudish theologian who smashes wine glasses and sermonizes against the sex-pots at Desiree’s party, in Smiles of a Summer Night. Having been so recently (and perennially) mauled by her emotional endeavors, the earthy trails and skies oppress her, and the visual enthusiasts delighting in them drag her to depths without direction. “Gorgeous!” someone praises. “You have to be crazy to cram on a beach,” is another assessment we should not be quick to ridicule. Then there is a savvy point of view we’d like to know more of. “I always like the hilly landscapes. It’s wild… This landscape is nothing, but it becomes part of you…” A flock of wild geese flies over, and the urbanists go into a tizzy. In Smiles of a Summer Night, the onset of the Count and his entourage reaching Desiree’s mother’s lovely grounds involves a noisy, smelly ancient car, an irritant, especially to the Attorney’s pedantic, moralistic son. Here, on the walk, however, it is Isabelle, the scattered hipster, who lacks the leaven of the new. The film lulls us into the given that she’s a powerhouse of aesthetic discovery—with some personal rough edges. But, with the exception of  about 8 seconds of her shaking black trajectories over a vivid white canvas, we have no clear sense that she knows or cares anything remotely resembling out of the ordinary. (Vincent is about as close to Van Gogh as she proves to be; what we’re on the edge of seeing is a presumptuous, attractive groupie, not without networking smarts. Along the way, her ex puts in a visit whereby he indicates that he had financed her early career, such as it was.)

That night, at a bar, with scant mentioning of the arts event, one of her confidants sees fit to tell her, “Making love is better when you’re in love.” Though the tantrum would still be resonating, there is, still, something very suspect about attending a trade-show while being  unconcerned about the displays. The table-mate continues, “It’s good to let yourself go.” And, at this point of lovelorn attention, someone, unmistakably a local, very unlikely having seen any of the contemporary, trend-setting art, comes in just as the sound-system provides the vintage tune, by Etta James (a black often seen with blonde-treated hair, and therefore the inspiration of that quirky painting a while ago), “At Last!” He settles his gaze upon her cleavage, escorts her to the dance floor, and this mixed-media cocktail definitely upstages the festival—and lovelorn doldrums, the spigot of advantage finally (for how long?) drying up. What interested priorities each of them may still harbor reveal, in the cinematic acuity of Denis’ artistry, a tempering having caught fire where so many bids had failed. The long arabesques of their highway, involving partnering culminating in caresses and kisses, serve to enhance and tolerate the show-biz inclusiveness. “At last, my love has come along/ My lonely days are over, and life is like a song… I found a thrill to press and cling to/ A thrill I’ve never known/ You smiled, you smiled/ And here we are in heaven/ For you are mine at last…”

Her follow-up, in petitioning her ex (after coitus) for a key to one of the properties he had shared with her in the past, could not have been worse. (Why would she eschew her studio/ pad, unless she anticipated his becoming an embarrassment in face of a supposed glittering syndrome?) Not only does she fail to accomplish that hideaway; but she gets a tongue-lashing from the presiding dad, about the damage to their ten-year-old daughter in any of the infrequent appearances. That she rushes out to his car where the girl had been out of the picture, only to a shambles of a fleeting getaway, leaves her far less than, “life is like a song.”

At a surprisingly dowdy restaurant, soon after that disaster, she allows herself to completely capitulate. The voice of common sense, who witnessed her letting herself go in the hinterland, now feels obliged to point out that, as Isabelle herself could only too easily see, those who fail to occupy the self-evident heights are a waste of time. “Do the two of you ever talk?” is the doorway, it seems, to an expose. She, still having a faint recollection that the dark horse has a special allure, smiles indulgently. “Do you know if he has friends? No couple can stay in a bubble without a social environment” (To this, she first argues that she’s only known him for three weeks; then she limply declares she has seen his friends.”) “Maybe he’s afraid I won’t want to see his friends,” she moots. Cutting into that subterfuge, he let’s fly upon a constituency he wants to see killed, though his dogmas demand smoothness. “You offer him a legitimacy he’s never had. How does he get by? On welfare? You’re entitled to more. He’ll never give you what you need. Trust me, you’ll see. Your own milieu. To love you need to admire.” She, never thinking of ways to counter his position—never having seriously thought for herself—states, “Who knows if it will last?” On the heels of that retreat, he iterates, “Meet someone of your milieu, you’ll see… It’s you I don’t get. I wouldn’t bet a sou on this relationship…”

She walks along an icy, blue, steel barrier, perhaps bespeaking solvency-to-come, for a builder. She phones him in that coarse surround, unaware of the light-years gap between it and the moment of non-industrial vision she had briefly touched. Her voice is without love as she summons him, “I have things to tell you.” At the rendezvous, it is, in fact, the snobby advisor who really speaks—he who fussed, “Does he understand how our profession works?” “He said I should ask whether you had friends…He said to ask about seeing him with his friends… Why don’t we talk?  He said it wouldn’t last…” Still holding on to a link no longer in service, the outsider reasons, “He hurt you, and so you want to hurt me. Not nice…  How dumb of you. Truth is you like them. A smart girl like you could have told him, ‘Stop badmouthing the man I love!’ Stay, come to me…”

The film is called, Let the Sunshine In, presumably the destiny of a “vulnerable,” Isabelle. (As such, her lament, “It’s like my love life is behind me,” defines her, in an ominous light.) As it happens, the sunshine in question is the creation of the one she has decided she can’t “admire.” That our protagonist and her milieu are bogus is self-evident, and not that remarkable. But that the only credible creative force in sight is a rural laborer, stops us dead in our tracks. The Bergman film, set around the year 1900, showed marginal, but in one instance, influential, lucidity. As with the recent Coens’ film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), the ominous superficiality of dominant, “educated” pace-setters (Isabelle becoming a life-long client of a lost graduate of something) represents a new crisis.

The nameless exponent of “At Last” needs some love here, and here’s the way to deliver it. That frisson on the dance floor nukes 3000 years of timorous fakery. Staying the course of those other (circus) laborers, Jof and Marie, from the medieval saga, The Seventh Seal, there is not only acrobatics on the menu, but juggling amidst the generally perverse. It isn’t easy. But love helps a lot.

  

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