Venus and Mars Are All Right Tonight

LET THE SUNSHINE IN (B+) - Juliette Binoche carries this sly, amusing drama about middle-aged woman frustrated by her own dating choices. Claire Denis crafts a truly adult-themed film about the tensions and emotional duels between men and women. The result is a refreshing, if occasionally slight, examination of the war between the sexes.

Binoche easily sheds her glamour as Isabelle, jumping out of the gate with a topless sex scene with her boorish, grunting (and married) lover, a pompous banker. She efficiently cycles through a series of louts and emotionally retarded and immature candidates. Whether it's low self esteem or a mild mental illness, Isabelle cannot rationally process the signals she gets and is too eager to jump into bed and fall in love with the next guy who comes along. (An actor is particularly swaddled in red flags.)

There is smart dialogue throughout. (Denis ("Beau Travail," "Friday Night," "White Material," "Bastards") collaborated on the screenplay with newcomer Christine Angot, adapting a book by Roland Barthes.) You may laugh out of discomfort as much as anything here. A French legend's cameo at the end, as a therapist putting this all in perspective, is the perfect mix of denial and farce. This is a quiet gem from Denis and Binoche.

THE HAIRDRESSER'S HUSBAND (C-minus) - An anachronism that is often cringe-worthy now in the Me Too era, Patrice Leconte's 1990 breakthrough features Jean Rochefort as a lustful middle-aged man acting out his childhood fantasies by scoring young, beautiful Anna Galiena as his devoted wife.

Rochefort, awkwardly bewigged and made up to appear to be much younger than his age (around 60), portrays the leering, monosyllabic, puppy-eyed Antoine, who as a boy had a crush on a plump hairdresser, got a glimpse of her ample bosom, and was determined to marry a coiffeuse someday. As an adult, he has a meet-creepy with Mathilde (Galiena, 20 years Rochefort's junior), who inexplicably dates and quickly marries him. She doesn't mind being the object of his odd fetish.

Leconte (who hit his stride in the early aughts with "Man on the Train" and "Intimate Strangers") uses soft focus and random flashbacks to confusing effect. It's all style over substance. It wouldn't be surprising if he has disavowed this early work.

BONUS TRACK
Our title track, the ad for Paul McCartney's mega-release from 1975, the "Venus and Mars" album: