Claire Denis opens her new film, "Both Sides of the Blade" (aka "Fire") with a wordless sequence featuring Sara (Juliette Binoche) and Jean (Vincent Lindon) frolicking in the water during a getaway. When they return home to their tony Paris apartment, they have sex. The love between this couple — who have been together about a decade, it is later revealed — is still very strong. And over the course of this absorbing film, that love will be tested.
"Both Sides of the Blade" spends much of its first half establishing the characters and their backstories. Sara hosts a radio program where she interviews a Lebanese woman about the country losing its lifeblood, or a West Indian man about "white thinking." It is on her way to her job one day that Sara spies François (Grégoire Colin), her former lover and Jean's friend, whom she left to be with Jean. She is struck by this unexpected sighting — François does not see her — and it causes Sara some anxiety.
