Review of ‘Both Sides of the Blade’ directed by Claire Denis

Direction: claire Distribution: Laura Galan, Richard Holmes, Carmen Machi, Claudia Salas, Irene Ferreiro Original title: Avec amour et Country: Spain Year: 2021 Gender: thriller Script: Christine Angot, Claire Denis Photography: Eric Gautier Synopsis: Sara and Jean have had a loving and stable relationship for ten years. They’re happy. He is her rock, someone she can cling to. When they met, Sara was in a relationship with François, Jean’s best friend. One day, Sara sees François on the street. He doesn’t see her, but she is overwhelmed by the feeling that her life could suddenly change. In fact, François contacts Jean to suggest that they work together again. Before long, things are in danger of spiraling out of control.

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We cannot fight against the skin, which has its laws, its preferences, its particular fire. When the skin fights with love, the world trembles. The latest film by Claire Denis speaks of that tremor, which shows its chest between the miseries and brilliance of a love triangle that the French filmmaker deconstructs with her particular style. His is a cinema of impulses, which does not like to give explanations. For this reason, from the narrative we will only know the basics: a couple loves each other, a ghost from the past appears, opens a crack in which jealousy filters first, then skin and its mandates. Those who know and admire Denis’s cinema – those who embrace her as that filmmaker of the body and desire, allergic to making concessions – know that her films are articulated around ellipsis and sparkle, emptiness and catharsis, and ” Both Sides of the Blade” is no exception. There are few contemporary filmmakers who know how to film the inevitability of two skins that recognize each other, as occurs in the reunion of Sara (Binoche) and François (Colin), in which the camera seems to caress them, smelling the clamor of tragedy. And the tragedy appears in gushes, when a discussion between Sara and Jean (Lindon, exploiting the most vulnerable side of him) is followed by a scene where the betrayal is hidden, and another where the discussion is repeated with little continuity. We could say that the film takes place in an emotional temporality, and that is the intimate force that feeds it, often in a very beautiful way. It’s a shame that Denis doesn’t settle for the anatomy of her human passion, and she diverts our attention to a somewhat unnecessary subplot that she wants to weigh in on racial identity and xenophobia to show that all that emotional turmoil isn’t there. bursting into a bubble.

‘Both Sides Of The Blade’, the new movie claire denishas been screened at the Berlinale 2022.