SummarySara (Juliette Binoche) and Jean (Vincent Lindon) have been in a loving, stable relationship for ten years. They are happy. He is her rock, someone she can hold on to. When they first met, Sara was in a relationship with François (Grégoire Colin), Jean’s best friend. One day, Sara sees François on the street. He does not see her, but she is overw... Read More
Directed By:Claire Denis
Written By:Christine Angot, Claire Denis
Both Sides of the Blade
Metascore
Generally Favorable
73
User score
Generally Favorable
6.1
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Metascore
Generally Favorable
78% Positive
21 Reviews
21 Reviews
19% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
4% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Jul 11, 2022
100
There is something exquisitely grown-up about Both Sides of the Blade, which works its way up into a series of excruciating fights between Jean and Sara in which they talk and talk and wound one another terribly while failing to ever say what they really mean.
Feb 21, 2022
88
The studied ambiguity of what’s going on in Fire doesn’t keep it from often achieving the suspense of an accomplished erotic thriller.
User score
Generally Favorable
50% Positive
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
38% Mixed
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
13% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
Jul 19, 2022
9
Do not leave your seat before the credits are done. More is revealed as the credits scroll down! That said, this is a literary film, burrowing into its main character, Sara. You will ruin the pleasure of watching if you start judging her; best to try to understand what she is undergoing. The dialogue is often amazingly plausible. Binoche has the kind of beauty that compels one's unwavering attention. There is a lot of mystery in this film, which makes it both interesting and nettlesome, but definitely worth seeing.
Jul 7, 2022
80
Watching it, you can feel Denis zeroing in on the conventions of the bourgeois French melodrama with something resembling a lover’s playfulness; she wants to rough them up, test their limits and bend them into challenging new configurations.
Feb 15, 2022
80
The sense of love dissolving and lives thrown into chaos as a dormant past violently breaks through the surface is unexpectedly moving, all the more so because of the film’s rigorous rejection of sentimentality.
Jul 8, 2022
67
While it is important for the film to immerse itself in the emotional struggles of the scenes, it also is hindered by some occasionally abrupt edits and anarchic writing that dulls the sharpness of its story.
Feb 15, 2022
60
The film has an impetuous, let’s-try-it-on quality that makes it a modest pleasure.
Dec 25, 2022
7
Love's fickleness is so extreme that the stability you may have fought for for years can be **** in a second by a chance encounter that turns you into someone else. This story may seem like a romance at first, but soon it becomes a story whose language devolves into constant evasions and outright lies until it all comes out, and those moments are never tidy or pleasant. The storytelling is not too clean and there is more than one occasion where it gives the feeling that the script is pushing towards melodrama, not so much to force the breakdown because you can see it coming, but to give a sense of gloom, which to some extent is understandable. Once the breaking point is reached, nothing is ever the same again and now we see how the masks fall. Both Sides of the Blade is a film that relies entirely on the strength of its actors and their performances. A dialogue driven drama from beginning to end.
Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon do a more than excellent job and are the pillars of the story as they should be.
It may not be spectacular, but it is enjoyable, nonetheless.
Feb 12, 2023
4
(Mauro Lanari)
As states the title of the 2018 book by Christine Angot on which the film she co-wrote the screenplay is based, Binoche's Sara is at "Un tournant de la vie", a mid-life crisis [not really: protagonists are in their sixties but they are keen to show themselves younger]. Undecided about everything, she will pay the consequences, a "Buridan's ass" with a foregone outcome. The baroque pop of Tinderstick creates a dark pall of incomprehensible dramatic tension which weighs down Claire Denis' work even more. Silver Bear for Best Director to a typical French story about an affective/love/sentimental/sexual mess. Menopause for all of them?
Production Company:
- Curiosa Films
- Canal+
- Ciné+
- Cinémage 15
- Cofinova 17
Release Date:Jul 8, 2022
Duration:1 h 56 m
Awards
Berlin International Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
International Cinephile Society Awards
• 1 Nomination
Calgary European Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
