Maximum French
Claire Denis’s entirely adult portrait of a very messy marriage couldn’t be more Gallic if it tried.
Both Sides of the Blade
Director: Claire Denis • Writers: Christine Angot, Claire Denis, based on the book by Angot
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Vincent Lindon, Grégoire Colin, Bulle Ogier, Issa Perica, Mati Diop
France • 1hr 56mins
Opens Hong Kong June 15 • III
Grade: B+
The original title of French filmmaking titan Claire Denis’s adaptation of author Christine Angot’s book Un tournant de la vie – “a turning point in life” – was Avec amour et acharnement, which translates literally as “with love and relentlessness.” That couldn’t be more apt a description of Both Sides of the Blade. The film is, at least on the surface, a straight-ahead, painfully grown-up, meandering, emotionally heightened portrait of a marriage on the downswing. A current affairs radio host, Sara (Juliette Binoche, and is she, like, the only actress working in France? What will its film industry do when she eventually dies?) sees her wonderfully horny and mature relationship with Jean (Vincent Lindon) threatened when her former lover François (Denis regular Grégoire Colin) re-inserts himself into both their lives. That is the tip of a very large, very fevered iceberg.
Since her 1999 breakout Beau Travail, Denis has dabbled in genre as much as she has drama: Trouble Every Day was her spin on vampire horror, Bastards was a thriller, Bright Sunshine In was as close as Denis is every likely to get to rom-com, and High Life was essentially sci-fi. Both Sides of the Blade is a deceptively simple love triangle drama that’s rooted in Denis’s signature psychological curiosity, and a study of female (adult female) desire. For the most part, you love Denis and what she tries to do, or you don’t. Those who don’t appreciate her controlled aimlessness and, at first blush, the rambling interactions between her characters are going to throw a fit at Both Sides of the Blade, especially the closing frames in which an adult woman baffles at the Genius Bar’s inability to retrieve data from a phone she drowned in a bathtub. Everyone else is going to bask in the glow of the same woman’s clean slate; her turning point. Either way it’s pure Denis. And it’s also really, really French.
Denis has always been a master of capturing the way people actually talk to each other, whether it be in the throes of passion or blinding rage, and she has always put faith in her casts to makes those palpitating moments feel real. Denis gets lucky (or she chose well) once again in Blade, gathering three of her perpetural favourites for what could be a chamber drama were it not for the sun-dappled beach, the buzzing Paris neighbourhoods and Sara and Jean’s ridiculous histori-modern flat (no, you can’t see the Eiffel Tower from the balcony in a bit of verisimilitude). Binoche is becoming the De Niro to Denis’s Scorsese, and she digs down to tap an iciness she doesn’t normally evoke, which serves Sara well. Lindon is the wild card, however, bringing the same kind of sad sack vibe he did to his macho fireman in Titane to Jean, who’s not quite as surefooted as Sara. François is an afterthought – until he’s really not, and Colin plays him as a harmless “Who? Me?” type, which makes his dickery that much more gross.
Now, nothing really happens in Blade, yet somehow three people’s lives implode in the span of maybe a couple of weeks. After their sun-dappled vacation, Sara and Jean get back to work, she at the radio station and he doing… not much. At least not yet. He’s practically fresh out of jail – we never know for what – and it seems like his old friend François is kinda sorta responsible for putting him there. Jean’s also a retired footballer, so when François offers him a gig, maybe as atonement, he hesitantly accepts. Is Sara okay with that? Yes, she insists she is. But she’s not. And boy do things get messy from there. The petty jealousies, insecurities and reprioritised desires are rife, and the more the players circle each other, getting drawn into a tighter and tighter orbit, the more raw everyone gets.
As usual, Denis stacks the narrative with peripheral observations, unsurprisingly lobbing a barb or two at France’s ugly colonial legacy. Jean’s awkward, oblivious white guy moment comes when he lectures his semi-slacker half-Black son, Marcus (Issa Perica) on the value of not letting himself be defined by others, and being more than just “Black” or “Arab”. Only a white guy would say that. Elsewhere Sara interviews an author who briliantly deconstructs French racism in about three sentences. The tension of Jean and François’s past is always there. Jean is perpetually dodging his mother Nelly’s (Bulle Ogier) phone calls. But those elements add texture to the story: The focus is Sara and her restless distraction when a shiny new toy comes into view, one she didn’t even realise she wanted to play with. The Big Moment, when Jean and Sara let their frustrations fly, has a suitably agonising nakedness to it that makes you feel like you’re spying on the neighbours having a row, made even more uncomforable by DOP Éric Gautier’s (Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep, Jia Zhangke’s Ash is Purest White) intimate hand held camerawork. Both Sides of the Blade may not be peak Denis, but it’s pure Denis. — DEK