Beautifully shot cinematography of desire
“Here we go again. Love, fear …” and a cinematography of desire patiently and artistically shot – it’s what we expect from French cinema, but is it enough?
In the opening scene of Both Sides of the Blade, Sara and Jean are on holiday, the water they wade in transparently clear and idyllic. They kiss, laugh, swim, hold each other, kiss and laugh some more. When they return home to the Paris apartment they share, they sort through mail then make love. Their life together appears fulfilling and established, but then Sara spots an old lover, François, in town, who wants to rekindle a business partnership with Jean, and the low-toned strings build tension as the lines of the love triangle become taut.
Both Sides of the Blade is French director Claire Denis’s adaptation of Christine Angot’s novel Un tournant de la Vie, translated as A Turning Point in Life, and she won Best Director for the film at the Berlin International Film Festival. With an exceptional cast made up of Juliette Binoche as Sara, Vincent Lindon as Jean and Grégoire Colin as François, the trailer promises a moody intensity that delivers. Cinematographer Eric Gautier adds to the list of why-this-film-works with his intimate close-ups and slow motions of skin on skin, hand-holding, nose-touching – between him and Denis, the film nails forbidden passion and longing. But there are a lot of reasons the film doesn’t work.
In showing Sara and Jean’s love for one another in the first half of the (slow-moving) film, they endlessly kiss and say I love you in a way that might be overkill for a couple who’ve been together for around a decade, but more importantly, they do these things as a way to end conversations that never begin. Perhaps this says something about Sara and Jean’s relationship – or the screenwriting – but it does not say enough. The murky, unanswered backstories of the characters work in building mystery and friction as it sends a message to the audience that these three people are complex and they’ve lived entire lives separate from one another, highlighting that what happens in the short length of this film is what matters at this precise moment in their lives, but it can also be a distraction. Most frustrating is that the characters are selfish and childish in their secretive ways, so the tension so carefully crafted throughout the film does not live up to their mercenary tantrums.
Both Sides of the Blade is a beautifully shot work loaded with atmosphere, but in the end, I couldn’t care less about who Sara ends up with.
Reviewed by Heather Taylor Johnson
Both Sides of the Blade opens on September 1st
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