Both Sides of the Blade

There’s plenty of Denis poetry and ambience in Both Sides of the Blade, but there’s red-in-the-face screaming, too, brought about by the unresolvable ache of loving two people at the same time.

A film to ponder, argue over and, in the end, weep salt tears over.

Both Sides of the Blade is love and fury, enticement and repulsion. In the grand passions of the heart and in art, the two are often inextricable.

The leading actors are superb, and though the basic narrative — a woman torn between two lovers — is hardly new, Denis brings fresh insights and impact to the familiar material.

Some of this is too tricky for its own good. But there’s nothing cleverly intellectual about the potent scenes where Sara and Jean let loose -- and when they do, Denis is the real third party in the room.

Binoche plays Sara as almost unaware of her own wavering feelings for Jean; she’s lying both to the audience and herself, and her slow disintegration is spellbinding.

Both Sides of the Blade isn’t as impactful as it should be. Still, the film is an impeccable showcase of how terrific Vincent Lindon and Juliette Binoche are as actors, and are able to chew up the screen and make the most of their time together.

Both Sides of the Blade tells a pandemic adjacent story of a love triangle and the ripples of misguided and candid love. 




Be it film, novel, poem or song, the triangle is one of the most frequent tropes in storytelling. Denis is such a gifted moviemaker, though, that cliche is absent from the precise and specific moments inside her intelligently constructed universe.

Being incarcerated in this hermetically sealed world for nearly two hours is a suffocating experience at times, despite the impressively mature performances of Binoche, Lindon and Colin.