Both Sides of the Blade, the new film from French auteur Claire Denis, wasn’t supposed to happen.
After making her English-language debut with the sci-fi drama High Life (2018), starring Robert Pattinson, Mia Goth, Juliette Binoche and André 3000, the 75-year-old director was set to head to South America to shoot The Stars at Noon, a period drama set in 1980s Nicaragua, with Pattinson and Margaret Qualley to star.
Then, COVID happened and everything shut down. Unable to start on Stars and suddenly with time on her hands, Denis and her Let the Sunshine In co-writer Christine Angot conceived a more local story: a Paris-set love story starring Binoche as Sara, a woman in love with Jean (Vincent Lindon) whose ordered life is disrupted when François (Grégoire Colin), Jean’s old friend and her former lover, suddenly returns. Sara is caught between her desire for both men.
In the meantime, Denis not only finished Both Sides of the Blade — which premiered in competition at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival on Saturday after being acquired by IFC Films for the U.S. —she also managed to shoot The Stars at Noon, with Joe Alwyn replacing Pattinson, in Panama, finishing principal photography late last year.
Denis had just started post-production on The Stars at Noon when she took time to talk with THR via telephone from her editing suite in Paris about Both Sides of the Blade, also called Fire, shooting under COVID protocols, and the first on-screen pairing of Lindon and Binoche.
How did this film come about, because you were originally planning to shoot The Stars at Noon after High Life, with Robert Pattinson to star alongside Margaret Qualley.
Yes, it was all the consequences of COVID. I had this project [Stars at Noon] to be in Nicaragua or Panama, and everything was blocked because the virus came. And Robert was stuck in a hotel in London for Batman [after testing positive for COVID]. He was like in jail in a hotel in London. So I spoke with my producer and with Vincent [Lindon] and Juliet [Binoche]. They had never been in a film together. So we wrote this story [of Both Sides of the Blade] during the confinement and the shutdown.
How did that experience impact the story of Both Sides of the Blade?
Well, [the COVID lockdown] gave us all a different measure of time. Suddenly we had this sort of extra time, a bit of time that was not expected. It was a strange time, when the streets of Paris were empty, when people were wearing masks in the subway, when we weren’t allowed to go out. But somehow we got this extra life to do this film when we never expected to.
It certainly is a major shift in tone and setting from High Life…
High Life was a sort of dream I had a long time ago, a dream in space, and Robert is so the perfect interpreter of that dream. Now the COVID world has brought us all back to earth. Therefore, this film is in some ways a more trivial story, but maybe more cruel.
This is your third film with Juliette Binoche. She’s becoming something of a muse for you.
I was keen on her for years, I knew her for a long time before doing Let The Sunshine In (2017). That film was in Cannes, and she was there with me. Juliette knew I was going to shoot my next film [High Life] in a studio in Cologne, but Patricia Arquette, who was supposed to be in it, had to stay in L.A. to do an episode of a TV series. And Juliette said to me: I can replace her if you want. It was a great offer. But I would not call her my muse. She’s such a strong person, so alive and independent. She’s more like my companion.
What does she bring to this role of Sara?
Juliette is not a planning person. She’s very straightforward. The inner Juliette is always very direct and very honest. She’s not cunning at all, she’s always going into things straight.
Is that how you see Sara, because on one level, she’s a deceiver.
I don’t think so. For me, this is a person in a love relationship where, by accident, her former lover comes back in her life, and she feels that strange desire coming back. She feels that [first] love story was interrupted. She’s trying not to hurt Jean [Vincent Lindon]. It’s not deceiving. It’s not even cheating for me. If I can be frank, if this character was a man, you wouldn’t ask a question like that. Somehow a woman is different. But I think it’s the same.
What difference does it make that the characters, the lovers, are older?
I don’t care about what age they are. Why, do you mean Juliette is too old for you, that she’s too old to be sexy?
No, of course not.
You’re obviously very moralistic.
No, you’re misunderstanding. I mean: are the consequences of Sara’s actions greater because this affair happens later in life, and not when she is younger?
As you get older, everything has more serious consequences. It’s not only love, everything has more consequences when you get older, everything means suddenly maybe this was the last time. It’s like you have a clock in as you get older. Maybe when you are 20, whatever you do, you think: this may happen again. Not so as you get older. Everything becomes very precious. Because it could be the last time.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
Source: HollyWood
