"Both Sides of the Blade," Reviewed: Claire Denis's Politics of Privacy

Claire Denis's recent collaborations with the actress Juliette Binoche have all been modernist twists on classic genres, starting with "Let the Sunshine In," a screwball comedy, and "High Life," a work of science fiction. The latest, "Both Sides of the Blade," which opens Friday, is a romantic melodrama; it lays bare the societal circumstances that play a decisive role in a middle-aged couple's life together, and it does so without stinting on direct and passionate emotional expression. If melodrama is the art of exaggeration, presenting the lives of everyday people in the terms and the tone of tragedy, Denis approaches the genre as the art of democratic authenticity, of truth. She treats her characters' story like a mirror for the earnestness and the dignity with which they view themselves, and she displays the public conditions, the web of power and authority, that get in the way--and that are nonetheless inseparable from the way that they see themselves. There's something Edenic about the romance of Sara (Binoche) and Jean (Vincent Lindon), who are first seen frolicking and intertwining, playfully and passionately, in the sumptuous isolation of the sea.