The Berlinale welcomes Claire Denis with open arms, not least because there are always well-known stars of French cinema in her entourage. (It’s hard to believe that Denis has never walked the red carpet in Berlin.) This year, Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon, the leads in their competition film “Both Side of the Blade,” are giving interviews in the hotel rooms next door.
Actors and actresses are keen to act in their films because Denis is guaranteed not to fobb them off with run-of-the-mill roles.
So meeting Claire Denis for the first time is quite a daunting experience. At 75, she’s now something of a grande dame of French cinema, but you shouldn’t let her petite appearance fool you. With “Trouble Every Day” she shot a bloody vampire love film, her ideas of love and romance are very special. And controversial.
Claire Denis gives her interviews in English, which is handy because she can always throw a “What The Fuck” into her answers. She speaks harshly but warmly, and responds curtly to questions that don’t suit her. You believe her when she says almost apologetically: “What have I not already said to men in my anger…”
Her films thrive on this friction, she is infatuated with complicated men and women. With Binoche she has now shot for the third time in a row. Mutual trust, she says, is irreplaceable in this work: “Making films is so boring, really. A director has to feel an attraction to her actors, otherwise it doesn’t work.”
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The film’s title “Both Side of the Blade”, after a song by Tindersticks singer Stuart Staples, is the perfect symbol for interpersonal relationships, according to Denis: “In love you easily hurt people, but you also put yourself in danger. She has a price. Sara is aware of that.” For Denis, the Binoche character is a woman who does not rely on the security of a stable partnership and who tests freedom – similar to the role played by Binoche in “My Beautiful Inner Sun”.
The films actually form a bracket in Denis’ more recent work, she worked on both screenplays with the writer Christine Angot. Denis describes Sara as “free and fragile”, but her game in the ménage-à-trois is on a knife’s edge, so to speak. One doesn’t really see through the director’s feminist view of her character, whose self-determined attitude is increasingly showing cracks. Binoche confirms this irritation indirectly. In an interview, you can hear later how unhappy she is with her character Sara in hindsight. It would have been nice to have drilled into Denis, who raves about the collaboration.
But she admits that filming wasn’t easy. The suspense in the first half of “Both Sides of the Blade”, which insinuates a mystery about the three main characters, was not intended, says Denis. Her nerves were on edge, she remembers: “We were under tension.
It was important to Denis that the pandemic was constantly present in the film
It was winter, we were shooting in an apartment, everyone wore masks.” Denis and Angot hatched the idea for the film at the beginning of the first lockdown, and they withdrew to a hotel room in Montpellier for three days to write. It was important to Denis that the pandemic would have a constant presence in “Both Side of the Blade”. “I understand directors who want to ignore that. But it’s important to me to film in the time we’re living through.”
She also cannot imagine that the pandemic can be banned from the cinema. “I remember my first film, we were just experiencing the HIV virus. At the time I was worried that the cinema would not capture this moment. So many have died, no one has forgotten them.
Covid may not be the disease of lovers, but it touches all people’s relationships.” Claire Denis may not be a romantic, but she knows about toxic relationships.
You can read a film review of “Both Sides of the Blade” here.
