For much of Claire Denis’ slow-roiling, superbly acted melodrama “Both Sides of the Blade,” we are in a Paris apartment that feels like a private paradise, a haven of domestic tranquility and sexual fulfillment. Sara (Juliette Binoche) and Jean (Vincent Lindon) have been together for a decade and still can’t keep their hands off each other, starting with an early beachside getaway and continuing well after they’ve returned home. There are kitchen caresses, bedroom smiles and long embraces on their balcony overlooking the city below, whose everyday anxieties — the story takes place smack in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic — seem to exist at a merciful remove.
Sara and Jean’s erotic bliss is so overpowering — and such a forceful reminder of how sexless so many of our movies are by comparison — that it feels a little too good to be true. That seems even more the case sometime later, when their apartment has become an emotional battleground, and Denis, a master of form, practically reshapes the walls around them in response. (Her key collaborators here include director of photography Eric Gautier and editors Emmanuelle Pencalet, Sandie Bompar and Guy Lecorne.) The air is charged with suspicion; that lovely balcony is sealed off. The camera darts between the lovers’ angry, exhausted faces in a flurry of slamming edits and chin-severing closeups, as if to literalize the idea that something between them has broken.
Until this point, their relationship has felt like a near-perfect bond forged in the face of imperfect circumstances. Years earlier, Jean spent time in prison for an unspecified crime, and he’s had trouble finding steady work since. His incarceration also kept him away from Marcus (Issa Perica), his biracial son from an earlier marriage, who’s now 15 and lives in the suburbs with Jean’s mother, Nelly (the superb screen veteran Bulle Ogier).
