Mark Reviews Movies: BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE

Both Sides of the Blade, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 7, 2022

To some extent or another, each of the three main characters in Both Sides of the Blade is bad news for the others, as well as people beyond the trio. At the core of co-screenwriters Claire Denis and Christine Angot's story is a married couple, whom we first see on a blissful, exotic vacation. They swim and smile and laugh and canoodle in the sea, and Denis, who also directed, ends this montage of marital happiness with a long shot of the two holding hands underwater. They are locked together, and from all appearances, that's a very good thing for each them, indeed.

The rest of the story picks apart this relationship, a pair of other ones from the past, and the three characters who come to make up something of a love triangle, with Sara (Juliette Binoche), the wife in that couple from the opening scene, as the foundational point of the geometry of these messy bonds. Denis' movie seems to find some sympathy or, at least, a bit of understanding in the way Sara feels both loyal to her husband Jean (Vincent Lindon, quite good as a man both aware of and trying to repress his emotions) and almost instinctually drawn back toward her former lover François (Grégoire Colin), who was and still could be the husband's friend.

After all, Jean isn't entirely reliable, given that he has a teenage son from a former marriage that he rarely sees and spent about 10 years in jail for a crime that is never revealed. Sara sees a bit too much control in the way he insists on doing the grocery shopping (driving out of his way to the town where his son lives, by the way, which makes his absence from the boy's life even more suspicious) and becomes upset if Sara doesn't give him enough attention when they're both at a party.

As for François, he and the husband were close friends when Sara started dating him, before realizing that the married Jean might be the more sensible and sturdy choice as a romantic partner. When the two of them ended up together, the friendship between François and Jean dissolved, for reasons that—like so much else in this story (from the first wife, to the circumstances surrounding Jean's time in prison, and to some other specifics of the past that seem pretty vital)—aren't disclosed by the screenplay. There are large gaps of individual and relationship history here, and they create chasm between these characters and our capacity to understand who they are, what they want, why they want it, and why we should care in the first place.

In a certain way, that might be part of Denis and Angot's point. Ultimately, this isn't the story of Sara being torn between a reliable, if genuinely shaky or only so in her mind, marriage and the passion she still feels for an old flame. It doesn't even care much for or about her by the end of the emotional wreckage wrought by these entanglements.

On her way to return to work after that vacation, Sara just happens to spot François across the street from the radio station where she works as an on-air host. That jumpstarts something inside her (The early communication of those lingering emotions, by the way, comes from Sara privately repeating François's name with the naïve longing of a teenager, and it's the kind of cheap shorthand that even an actor as skilled as Binoche can't make convincing). Apparently, François must have felt something, too.

Soon enough, he calls Jean, a former rugby player, with a job opportunity. François is opening a new sports agency, and he'd like Jean to work with him. Sara only seems to care if François mentioned her in his conversation with her husband. Only meeting his old friend alone and away from the apartment, Jean grows increasingly suspicious of his wife's feelings for her former lover (Given Sara's inability to hide her fascination, bordering on obsession, with and continued attraction to François from the start, Jean is downright generous in his reaction). Eventually, Sara and François start spending time together, while Jean tries to re-connect with his son Marcus (Issa Perica), who's currently living with his paternal grandmother (played by Bulle Ogier). The affair between Sara and her ex shows itself to be rather immature, and her marriage becomes a series of shouting matches.

Yes, this movie is inherently cynical about each of these characters, all of these connections and their emotional dependency, and the ways it sees both marriages and love affairs as façades—hiding who and what people truly are in relationships that put on a show of they believe they should or could be. In theory, this is sound and pessimistic enough as an idea. In practice, though, Both Sides of the Blade is far too hasty, too non-specific, and too uncertain in its characterization of the people, relationships, and drama arising from those elements to be believable—or, at least, to not feel contrived to make that larger point.

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