In a kind of alternate universe version of Trois Colours: Bleu, Juliette Binoche finds herself once more playing a Parisian woman, with an artistic bent, having lost her husband and daughter, navigating a second life in a search for new love and purpose.  Except that this time no one is dead; she's just divorced.  And rather than mourning her way from one brilliant visual to another to satisfy a decidedly male cinephile's gaze, Claire Denis directs Binoche (playing Isabelle) and a sequence of her self-absorbed lovers, with realism and nuanced perspective.  Binoche, now in middle age, is no less beautiful and commanding though, but now with a tender vulnerability that peeks through her armor of confidence and independent charm.

If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be reviewing and discussing Terence Young's Dr. No (1962).