Both Sides of the Blade – first-look review

After the high-con­cept lyri­cism of her Eng­lish-lan­guage sci-fi epic High life, French writer/​director Claire Denis opts for some­thing a lit­tle more ground­ed in her lat­est, a dra­ma shot and set dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and star­ring a famil­iar cast. At its heart are Juli­ette Binoche and Vin­cent Lin­don, play­ing a cou­ple whose lives are upend­ed when an old friend returns to town.

Sara (Binoche) and Jean (Lin­don) have been togeth­er for almost a decade, since they were intro­duced by mutu­al friend François (Gré­goire Col­in). At the time Jean was mar­ried with a young son and Sara was dat­ing François; now Sara is a high-pro­file radio host, Jean is a for­mer sports star with a crim­i­nal record, who strug­gles to main­tain any sort of inde­pen­dence due to his past.

Although it is nev­er revealed what land­ed Jean in prison, there is a sug­ges­tion François may have been involved in some way. At any rate, the decade between the trio’s last con­tact stretch­es ten­sion to a knife point. One morn­ing, Sara spots François on the street while com­mut­ing to her job. She is instant­ly over­whelmed by mem­o­ries of their romance, and – although pre­vi­ous­ly hap­py in her rela­tion­ship with Jean – ques­tions whether she made the cor­rect deci­sion all those years ago.

Denis’ rap­port with her cast cre­ates a rare mag­net­ism; she tru­ly under­stands the best way to utilise Binoche, Lin­don and Col­in, and takes care to high­light the fragili­ty of each fig­ure so no one real­ly appears as a vil­lain, which is so often the case in films where infi­deli­ty plays a cen­tral role. Although the view­er may not agree with Sara’s actions, it’s cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble to under­stand them, and the dual­i­ty of being in love with her part­ner while pas­sion­ate­ly in lust with anoth­er man is ele­gant­ly explored.

Binoche has a cool­ness to her that con­trasts nice­ly from one pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tion with Denis in 2017’s Let the Sun­shine In – Sara is pas­sion­ate, but not with­out a strange detach­ment from her actions. She seems either unwill­ing or unable to under­stand how she is hurt­ing Jean, while Lindon’s tight­ly-coiled man-on-the-verge occa­sion­al­ly erupts into fits of anger, where pain bub­bles through the indig­na­tion. François is a more coy char­ac­ter, though this tac­i­turn nature could be down to Sara’s infat­u­a­tion. She sees François as an escape from her day-to-day life, and she seems entire­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed in the fin­er details of his life.

While audi­ences are used to see­ing tales of infi­deli­ty, it’s rare to find one where there is such nuance and under­stand­ing between writer and actor. This melan­choly roman­tic dra­ma demon­strates Denis’ con­tin­ue inter­est not just in the fan­tas­ti­cal, but the tragedy of mun­dane cru­el­ty too.

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