Both Sides of the Blade

Pity the fool who under­es­ti­mates one of Claire Denis’ ​“small” films that she tends to make while wait­ing for the financ­ing to come togeth­er on her big­ger projects. We did it with the aston­ish­ing Let the Sun­shine In, which she made ahead of exis­ten­tial sci-fi epic, High Life, and we did it again with Both Sides of the Blade, which was pro­duced before her long-ges­tat­ing Denis John­son adap­ta­tion, The Stars at Noon.

Both of these ​“small” films were made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with writer and nov­el­ist Chris­tine Angot, and it’s hard to think of a more per­fect merg­ing of ideals and sen­si­tiv­i­ties than these two. The word ​“small” appears in scare quotes because it only refers to the scope of the pro­duc­tion: this film was made dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and is essen­tial­ly a three-per­son emo­tion­al rounde­lay which takes place in var­i­ous cold Parisian domi­ciles and offices. 

In terms of is philo­soph­i­cal reach and har­row­ing insight, this is a block­buster-sized pic­ture. It is about the bru­tal veloc­i­ty with which love can sud­den­ly dis­solve in front of us. But it also goes fur­ther and asks whether a love that can dis­solve real­ly deserves the nomen­cla­ture. The film con­vinc­ing­ly pro­pos­es that humans are built with the capac­i­ty to love only one per­son, and the act of try­ing to move on usu­al­ly leads to a state of con­fu­sion that verges on the malevolent. 

First, a scene of extreme tac­tile ten­der­ness (a Denis trade­mark), as Jean (Vin­cent Lin­don) and Sara (Juli­ette Binoche) canoo­dle in a far-flung lagoon, dis­con­nect­ed from the tumult of their dai­ly lives. A return to urban nor­mal­cy sug­gests that this a roman­tic con­nec­tion that is slight­ly strained by the toils of domes­tic drudgery, but also accepts that this is nor­mal for any cou­ple with long-term rela­tion­ship goals. 

Sara then spots old flame François (Gré­goire Col­in) and instant­ly she implodes. Exter­nal­ly, she’s just about able to keep it togeth­er with the depend­able but slight­ly effete Jean, but inter­nal­ly she’s melt­ing away, sin­gu­lar­ly focused on plac­ing her­self in François’ eye­line in the hope that she can see if he too is blight­ed by the heady curse of roman­tic fanaticism.

The ensem­ble sparks off one anoth­er to sell this idea, while Denis and Agnot work hard to embed the con­cept with­in the dra­ma. Lindon’s for­lorn cuck­old makes for a fine com­pan­ion to his father-on-the-verge-of-a-ner­vous-break­down in Julia Ducournau’s Titane, while Binoche deliv­ers gold as a char­ac­ter whose bru­tal sense of prac­ti­cal­i­ty should make her the film’s vil­lain, but she most def­i­nite­ly isn’t. Col­in, mean­while, does a lot with a lit­tle, his one big scene almost unwatch­able in its grim sub­or­di­na­tion. There was nev­er a ques­tion of whether this would be a great movie, but the pleas­ant sur­prise is that it is, in fact, a very great one.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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