Both Sides of the Blade (2022)
Directed by Claire Denis
Like all of Claire Denis’ films, Both Sides of the Blade suggests how deeply some truths can be hidden. It’s a moving film, in the same way that Beau Travail or High Life or Let the Sunshine In stirs something deep within you, trickling down your spine so as to question your place in the world. But with Blade, Denis’ ephemeral gestures provoke something deeply personal within me. The critical reception to the film suggests there’s a banality to it; a French love triangle involving beautiful people making bad decisions. But speaking from experience, Denis captures how one can be held hostage to their lies, forced to confront contradictions within themselves with clinical acuity. It’s a profoundly complicated film about the mental acrobatics involved in rationalizing love, trying to allocate your heart between the past and present. Many films have attempted to capture this anxiety-inducing energy, most have failed. This one gets it mostly right, benefited by featuring Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon doing what they do best.
Sara and Jean (Binoche and Lindon) are a middle aged couple, the former a radio journalist and the latter a retired rugby player. Jean relies on Sara as a beacon of stability. Previously incarcerated, he feels a debt is owed to Sara for sticking with him. Jean begins a partnership with François (Grégoire Colin), Sara’s former lover, in hopes of reintegrating into the sports world that left him behind. But as Sara encounters François in the wild, the wound from the past splinters open, threatening her relationship with Jean immediately. Here we see a delicate balance between someone using the past to move forward, while for another, the past brings them back to messiness and chaos. This will not end well.
The feeling is akin to a high; a place where no logic exists and you give yourself away to compulsion. Self-destruction never looked so appealing, where dopamine is received at maximum volume when indulging in what the body wants.Your skin becomes magnetic with your partner(s) and seemingly no force can wield you apart. I was reminded of the first short story in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s recent film, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, where a love triangle is dictated by precise logic and imperfect circumstance. In Denis’ film, the id runs amok, threatening everything in its path. Frequently we see scenes of Sara at her work, holding court over discussions on race theory. Meanwhile, Jean struggles with connecting with his estranged teenage son, a mixed-race child whose blackness overwhelms what Jean assumes to be his privileged whiteness. Both Sara and Jean engage in these discussions separately, but when confronting each other, when needing to communicate, they’re stifled and incapable of bridging the gap. They talk, but they don’t communicate; a throughline in Blade and regrettably, my own life.
Prior to Let the Sunshine In, Denis’ work was best defined by her misanthropy and nihilism; Bastards in particular left me with an unshakable despondency for weeks. But whereas Sunshine offers respite, Blade returns to that feeling of anomie and loss. As passionate and thrilling as the film may be, you begin to see the hearts of all the people involved here harden from callous to husk. Trust is the heartbeat of genuine love says bell hooks, and here we see things flatline. Petty remarks and lies bleed into arguments and bursts of violence. It leaves everyone at a loss. I’m reminded of another film from last year, Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World. There, the lead character indulges, but by the film’s end, you sense she’s found her path. In Blade, we see Sara engulfed by the Parisian cityscape, without anyone to call her own. Some people are always caught up in rapture and swept away by the past. Others survive the current. On my better days I believe in the latter.