BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE
Rated MA, 116 minutes
Directed by Claire Denis
Written by Denis and Christine Angot
Selected cinemas
★★★½

The most recent collaboration, before Both Sides of the Blade, between director Claire Denis and star Juliette Binoche was the audacious 2018 science fiction drama High Life, an account of a voyage into outer space less concerned with alien worlds than with all-too-human loneliness and sexual frustration.

Set back home in Paris, Both Sides of the Blade marks the first pairing of Binoche and her co-star Vincent Lindon, a thought experiment of a different kind. Not that there’s anything unreasonable about putting these veteran French stars together (Lindon too has made a couple of earlier films with Denis, including the nightmarish 2013 thriller Bastards).

Vincent Lindon and Juliette Binoche in Both Sides of the Blade.Credit:Curiosa Films/IFC Films

But it’s a little like the fable of the hare and the tortoise, or the union of opposites epitomised long ago by the Hollywood pairing of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Binoche is a creature of moods, her expression and posture constantly shifting. Lindon is a slow-burn actor, expert at letting us sense mounting anger beneath a gruff yet laid-back exterior.

There’s also a class gap between their characters, who have lived together for around a decade. Binoche is Sara, a radio journalist who interviews thinkers about issues of the day; Lindon is Jean, a former rugby player still struggling to get back on his feet after a stint in prison.

When Jean is offered a job as a talent scout, it seems like the opportunity he’s been looking for. The catch is that the offer comes from Francois (Gregoire Colin), Sara’s former husband – and as Sara admits as soon as the subject comes up, her feelings for her ex have never entirely gone away.

But this isn’t really a film about a love triangle. Whatever Francois means to Sara, to the viewer he remains peripheral: the primary focus is on what happens between Sara and Jean, and in the mystery of how swiftly a loving long-term relationship can fall apart.

As often in Denis’ films, additional plot elements are thrown in as if to undercut any straightforward thematic logic, even as visual motifs recur across different contexts (for instance, one character looking down on another from a height).

We meet Jean’s mother (the legendary Bulle Ogier) and his teenage son (Issa Perica) from a previous relationship. His son is mixed race, occasioning an odd spiel from Jean about the danger of defining yourself in society’s terms.

Some of this is too tricky for its own good. But there’s nothing cleverly intellectual about the potent scenes where Sara and Jean let loose – and when they do, Denis is the real third party in the room, filming their showdown from unexpected angles, as if she too were prone to shifting ground mysteriously from moment to moment.

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