Starring Juliette Binoche. In French, with English subtitles. Rated 14A

The limits of art, and of viewer patience, are tested in the deceptively named Let the Sunshine In—a movie that hardly allows air between words, or real warmth between humans.

The great Juliette Binoche plays Isabelle, a successful painter who has recently divorced for reasons never made plain. It’s not hard to imagine why, given the restless way she wanders the wintry streets of Paris, dressed with élan and looking for what she calls true love. The affairs we see don’t look especially promising.

First up is her ongoing thing with an oily banker (Xavier Beauvois) who really loves his wife, but oh, you kid! “I just got back from Brazil,” he states, shoving a bouquet in her face, “and I felt like banging you!” The flowers were de trop, apparently, and she suddenly fixes on a handsome stage actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle). On their first date, he whines about his work and says he’s leaving his wife, but hasn’t told her yet. Uh-huh. She insists on taking him to bed, and then feels offended when he’s the one who says “Too soon.” That dynamic is repeated many times, with Isabelle crying out for old-fashioned amour, men expressing ambivalence, and her pushing them around until she can judge their performances as, you know, lacking something.

Veteran filmmaker Claire Denis, working with playwright Christine Angot (both riffing on essays about love by Roland Barthes), was brave to create a character so unlikable, and so utterly dependent on and somehow immune to male validation. (Cue Etta James singing “At Last”.) One remarkable scene depicts Isabelle working on a large canvas, but her work feels distant from the story. As always, Binoche is never less than believable, but what are we being asked to believe?

Denis got in hot water recently for mocking the #MeToo movement; she’s always had a volatile relationship with the politics of race, sex, and class, starting with her first feature, Chocolat, set in French colonial Africa. (Binoche also starred in a film of that name, directed by Lasse Hallström. And Beauvois, the banking Lothario here, was in yet another Chocolat, from 2016, about a black belle-époque clown.)

In the final scene, running under the end credits, Binoche is paired with a mountainous Gérard Depardieu, seemingly playing a therapist. Actually, he’s a glorified fortune­teller, skilled at mansplaining what middle-aged women want to hear. Isabelle fails to notice that he’s mostly making a case for his spiritual journey into her pants. Or maybe he just thinks she has some chocolate.