16/02/2022 - BERLINALE 2022: Claire Denis and Juliette Binoche reunite in this messy tale delving into the oscillations of the heart

Vincent Lindon and Juliette Binoche in Both Sides of the Blade

Claire Denis may be a poet of cinema, but that doesn't mean she's very romantic. Anyone who has seen her vampiric masterpiece Trouble Every Day will know that she doesn't really do a clichéd version of love in her movies. The relationships are messy, often slightly abusive and always unnerving. The characters really don't know what they want out of a partner, so usually, it just leads to destruction, misery and heartache. When one walks out of a cinema, it's easy to wonder if love is worth all this hassle.

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She serves a similar dish with Both Sides of the Blade [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which is playing in competition at the Berlin Film Festival and reunites Denis with Juliette Binoche, who starred in 2017’s Let the Sun Shine In [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], the closest the French director has come in recent years to a feel-good version of romance. Even then, it was easy to lose count of the number of relationships that Binoche's character had to pass through in her search for “The One”.

In Both Sides of the Blade, Binoche once again woos the camera when playing a woman in turmoil over love. The surprise is that Denis puts an idealised version of love on screen for a brief moment at the start of the movie. You see – she can do it, if she wants to, just not for a whole feature. Binoche's character, Sara, is on holiday with her long-time partner Jean (Titane [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Julia Ducournau, Vincent Li…
film profile]'s Vincent Lindon), and they laze around on the beach, caress and swim in a sun-dappled sea. Of course, it's just the bridge over troubled water.

Once the couple gets back to Paris, the complications become apparent, and we wish they were back on that beach. Jean is estranged from his son, who now lives with his grandmother, Jean's mother. The boy's mum, Jean's former partner, is out of the picture. Sara has known Jean for a long time and got together with him because he would go home to his wife while her own beau, François (Grégoire Colin), would go home to his empty flat, rather than spend the night with her. It left Sara wondering, “Why do I stay with the one who leaves, rather than the one who goes home to his woman?” and so she gets together with an idea of Jean. Over the years, the reality proves to be different, and when she bumps into François, old rivalries, jealousies and intimacies surface.

But even though this love triangle is a staple of French cinema (shout out to Jules and Jim), this is one of Denis's weakest efforts. There are lots of ideas at play, and not all of them seem to belong in this picture. Sara works as a radio journalist, and she interviews people about the Beirut explosion, and race politics and theory, but the conversations seem out of place. They’re ideas that the director has explored in far more depth in other pictures about the treatment of Africans and Arabs, just being hammered in here. It has the reverse effect to what Denis intends, and makes these big subjects seem trivial and throwaway.

Besides this, the story is told in a choppy style, the messy editing reflecting the confused nature of Sara's state of mind, but it also means that the film itself is all over the place. Put together, it's hard to feel empathy with any of the characters, or care who Sara ends up with or whether Jean will reconcile with his son in the side plot. As with love, you can’t win them all.

Both Sides of the Blade was produced by France’s Curiosa Films and is sold internationally by Wild Bunch International.

Photogallery 12/02/2022: Berlinale 2022 - Avec amour et acharnement

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Claire Denis, Juliette Binoche, Vincent Lindon
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